Personalized medicine's transformation of health care accelerates, says Burrill

The life sciences sector continued to outperform the broader markets in September, but developments during the month were notable for highlighting the acceleration of the transformation of health care through personalized medicine, according to Burrill & Co, a diversified global financial services firm.

“Our health care system is dysfunctional and has largely been unchanged through human history in its episodic approach that focuses on treating the symptoms of illness,” says Steven Burrill, chief executive of Burrill & Co, adding: “Although personalized medicine’s transformation of health care is an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary process, the events of the past month point to a rapid acceleration of efforts to make medicine personalized, predictive, and pre-emptive and promises to bend the cost-curve of health care in a meaningful way.”

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s announced an ambitious $3 billion Cancer Moon Shots Program, which seeks to develop new diagnostics, devices, drugs, and policies to detect, prevent, and treat cancer by capitalizing on the convergence of low-cost sequencing, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies.