A Look at the Regulation of Diagnostics

Participants at the upcoming Personalized Medicine World Conference 2014 (PMWC) will be engaging in thoughtful debate and discussion on some of the biggest topics in the field of personalized medicine. I anticipate a lively discussion with Andrew Fish, Executive Director of AdvaMedDx on the topic of regulatory issues in molecular diagnostics.

The regulation of diagnostic products is one of the most contentious issues within the personalized medicine community today. Regulatory issues have led to confusion and uncertainty in the industry due to the involvement of multiple agencies with varying standards. Consensus on solutions among kit manufactures and laboratory developed test companies has been hard to come by.

At the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), we have heard from some who would prefer that the status quo is maintained; however, PMC contends that the status quo is not an option. While our members may not agree upon the exact course of action, it is time to acknowledge that action is needed to build a consensus around the development of an efficient, cost-effective process for bringing safe, high quality diagnostic tests to market in which patients, physicians, and payers can have confidence.

To initiate this process, PMC published Personalized Medicine Regulation: Pathways for Oversight of Diagnostics. The paper established baseline knowledge of the status of diagnostic regulation, and set the groundwork for future collaboration among industry, government, and other organizations.

To learn more about this important issue, with a look at the complex and diverse perspectives from key stakeholders, as well as to explore potential solutions, join me on January 28 at the PMWC 2014. Our discussion will look at areas of agreement and disagreement regarding the regulation of molecular diagnostics and likely scenarios for the future.

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 Look for additional posts from speakers and participants prior to the 6th Annual Personalized Medicine World Conference on January 27-28, 2014. For more information and the full agenda, visit: 2014sv.pmwcintl.com.

Ten Years into Personalized Medicine: What We’ve Learned and What’s Next

Ten years ago, the sequencing of the entire human genome, along with the development of aggregate “omics” technologies began giving rise to a fundamentally new capability for the practice of medicine – the ability to predict and track disease risks on a personalized basis, to understand diseases mechanistically, and to target therapy to treat an individual’s specific disease.

Based on the potential impact of these technologies, I predicted in my 2002 Chairman’s address to the Association of American Medical Colleges, that medicine would be transformed from being disease-focused and reactive to being proactive and personalized. I believed that the “one-size-fits-all” approach to disease care was outmoded and would soon be replaced by one that would prevent and treat disease on a personalized basis.

Since its inception ten years ago, many of those predictions have been realized; personalized medicine has begun to have major impacts on components of medical practice and has engendered health care industries estimated to grow to $450 billion by 2015 with $42 billion related to drugs, devices, and diagnostics. Molecular diagnostics have gained traction in cardiology, rheumatology, transplantation, endocrinology, and, in particular, oncology. Targeted therapies have revolutionized cancer therapy and whole genome sequencing is providing insights into baseline health risks and understanding of some diseases. However, while the use of personalized medicine tools to treat disease is gaining traction, the transformation of medical practice to being proactive, strategic, and personalized; i.e., personalized health care, has been slow to develop.

There is, however, evidence that this movement is gaining momentum and with increases in health care consumerism, a more predictable regulatory environment, and changes in medical reimbursement to reward better outcomes, the adoption of personalized health care is inevitable. Personalized medicine will go beyond the use of technologies to individualize disease care to finally transforming the approach to care itself by enabling individuals and care providers to foster proactive, personalized care. In turn, the clinical adoption of proactive, personalized care will broaden the need for personalized medicine technologies thus spurring the growth of this industry.

Appreciating the value of a ten-year review of personalized medicine, the Personalized Medicine World Conference will host, and I will moderate, a panel discussion titled, “Ten Years into Personalized Medicine: What We’ve Learned & What’s Next” on January 27, 2014 in Mountain View, Calif., with luminaries including Kim Popovits of Genomic Health, Randy Scott from InVitae, Brook Byers of KPCB, and Jay Flatley from Illumina, opining on what they initially anticipated, what they’ve learned, and what’s coming next.

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 Look for additional posts from speakers and participants prior to the 6th Annual Personalized Medicine World Conference on January 27-28, 2014. For more information and the full agenda, visit: 2014sv.pmwcintl.com.

Personalized Medicine Community Gathers in Boston for the Ninth Year to Share Insights and Innovation from the Field

Personalized Medicine was an emerging field of medicine in 2005 when we first held what was to become an annual event, our personalized medicine conference. The importance of personalized medicine was given a boost by the then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, who said in January 2005, “I believe we are moving into a remarkable and powerful new era in medicine and particularly in prescription drugs.  I’d refer to it as an era of personalized medicine.” Since then many different names have been given to this approach to medicine. They include “Precision Medicine”, “Genomic Medicine”, “Genetic Medicine”, “Individualized Medicine”, and “P4 Medicine” to name a few.

This year, we gear up for our 9^th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference on November 6^th and 7th, in Boston, arguments can be made about what name adequately describes the enterprise in which genetic and genomic information informs us about a person’s risk for human disease; about a clear diagnosis on which treatments depend; about prognosis for a disease such as cancer; about genetic variants in an individual patient that may determine that person’s ability to metabolize a particular chemical entity; about genetic and genomic changes that might inform physicians about the appropriate therapeutic approach; and about many other aspects of health and medicine where genetics may play a role. Some people in the scientific community contend that the use of such a diversity of names for the same enterprise is natural and reflects the evolution of the field. What we cannot ignore is the direction that the science is leading us – toward precision diagnosis and treatment of disease at the molecular level.

As I reflect on the past nine years, some aspects of personalized medicine have changed rapidly and others are relatively unchanged. One of the biggest and most exciting changes involves the growing commitment of drug developers to the development of targeted therapies. At the beginning of the 21^st century, there were only a few drugs that could be considered “targeted” therapies. Now, in cancer, for example, the development of such targeted therapies is becoming the norm because many of these drugs have few adverse effects and the response rates of patients, whose tumors have the molecular target for the drugs, are very high compared to other non-targeted therapies. We can find similar “personalized” approaches to treatment in the areas of infectious disease, cardiovascular disease and other areas.

Today, much of personalized medicine is fueled by new technologies related to DNA and RNA sequencing. It has been estimated that the cost of sequencing has dropped by a factor of 100 from the beginning of this century. The amount of DNA or RNA required to sequence whole genomes has also been reduced by orders of magnitude and there are now technologies in development that promise to sequence single molecules of DNA in a matter of few hours. As the technologies improve and associated costs decline, the benefits of genome sequencing become more apparent. It is easy to imagine a not-too-distant future when people around the world have their genome sequenced as part of the standard of care. Despite present concerns about the cost to analyze all of these genomic data, I am certain that newer algorithms will enable us to automate much of the analytical and interpretive processes to propel us toward a new level of understanding regarding the prevention and treatment of disease.

As the science evolves and entrepreneurs continue to innovate, we are faced with new challenges.

Open and informed discussions about issues related to personalized medicine are critical for better understanding of the successes, failures and promises of this relatively young medical enterprise. Our Conference in Boston provides one such forum and we hope that you will be able to join us.

The future of medicine is before us.

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Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School and the Partners HealthCare System in Boston will convene the 9^th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference on the campus of Harvard Medical School this November 6 and 7. As has been the practice since the Conference’s inception, this year’s meeting is in association with the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC). For the first time, we also welcome the participation of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), a member driven organization that has been dedicated for more than a hundred years to promoting cancer research and cancer care, as a co-convener.

For more information and to register for the 9^th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference, please visit www.personalizedmedicineconference.org.

Shaping the Future of Personalized Medicine with TEDMED

I had the opportunity recently to participate in a TEDMED Great Challenges panel discussion entitled, “Shaping the Future of Personalized Medicine.” My fellow panelists and Challenge Teammates included representatives from 23andMe, Foundation Medicine, Illumina, and InformedDNA.

As we discussed the challenges, opportunities and benefits of personalized medicine, three themes emerged.

First, personalized medicine, at its root, is about empowering patients to participate in their own healthcare. Trends in popular culture are meshing with advances in technology to allow consumers access to their health information and the ability to make informed decisions, and our culture is changing in that many now demand to be an involved party in their healthcare.

Amber Trivedi of InformedDNA noted that the power of personalized medicine lies not only in treatment, but prevention. As a genetic counselor, the most common questions asked by her patients are:  “What does my genetic information mean to me, and what will it mean to my children?” The best scenario for personalized medicine in action will come when patients are able to see not only the implications of their genetic dispositions, but also are motivated and empowered to use that information in preventative care.

Second, as Michael Pellini, the CEO of Foundation Medicine said, data has to be “accurate and actionable” to have value. However, we cannot discount the potential future benefits of the data discoveries that are underway today. We must find a balance between supporting ongoing data discovery and analysis, while also pushing for data that are actionable now.

Third, traditional healthcare models need to continue to shift to aid in the advancement of personalized medicine. Research cannot continue to solely focus on large population studies; payers need to develop innovative approaches to improve reimbursement policies; and healthcare professionals need training and resources to enable the adoption of personalized medicine in the clinical world.

Finally, when asked what we found to be the most invigorating about personalized medicine, my fellow panelists were quick to share the advances they see on the horizon, including an explosion in targeted therapies aided by new technologies; the shift of cancer to a chronic disease; revolutionizing the treatment of infectious disease through the application of lessons learned from personalized medicine advances in cancer; and deeper data mining enabled by technology currently used in other fields.

Regardless of our individual areas of focus within the world of personalized medicine, this Challenge Team is energized and optimistic about the future of medicine.

Follow the Great Challenges conversation, and submit your questions or comments on Twitter using #GreatChallenges, or at TEDMED.

Randy Scott: Bringing Metcalfe’s Law to Genomic Medicine

Each year, the Personalized Medicine Coalition recognizes an individual whose contributions in science, business, and/or policy have helped advance the frontiers of personalized medicine. This year, the Leadership in Personalized Medicine Award was presented to Randy Scott, Ph.D., during the Harvard Personalized Medicine Conference on November 28, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Receiving the 2012 Leadership in Personalized Medicine Award from the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), Randy Scott reflected on his success as the founder and former CEO of Genomic Health, but also looked ahead to new opportunities with his latest venture, InVitae Corporation.

Scott received the award this week at the 8th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference at Harvard Medical School. “Randy has transformed our understanding of how medicine can be practiced by creating one of the most successful personalized medicine companies to date,” stated Brook Byers, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a previous honoree. Past winners of the PMC Award include Janet Woodcock (FDA), Elizabeth Nabel (NIH), Ralph Synderman (Chancellor Emeritus, Duke University), and Leroy Hood (Institute for Systems Biology).

After a successful stint at Incyte, Scott founded Genomic Health in 2000 and led the firm for nine years, overseeing the development of the Oncotype Dx gene expression test for breast cancer. He modestly shared the credit with numerous colleagues. “My contribution was I probably did a good job of hiring a lot of people at Genomic Health who are way smarter than I was,” he said, naming in particular co-founder Joffre Baker, CMO Steven Shak, and CEO Kim Popovits.

As a graduate student in the early 1980s, Scott said he had been excited about biotech but worried he was too late. “All the exciting genes had been cloned! TPA, Factor VIII, human growth hormone, insulin,” he recalled thinking. Today, Scott said, “we’re on the precipice of incredible accelerating change in this field… Everything we’ve experienced to date pales in comparison to what we’re going to experience in the next 5-10 years.”

But he also shed some personal insight into the launch of his latest venture, InVitae Corporation. He said he is “unabashedly excited” about the future of personalized medicine. “Personalized medicine is really when disease happens to you—your friends or your family. Suddenly it’s no longer just an industry we’re working in but something so personal, so intense, and so emotional. We should never forget that.”

The Network Effect

Scott said reading Intel founder Andy Grove’s book Only the Paranoid Survive in the mid-90s, during his tenure at Incyte racing to identify human genes, was highly influential. In the book, Grove discussed the impact of Moore’s Law on the revolution in computing; Scott saw parallels with the biotech industry. “The way we were sequencing DNA [at the time] was so embarrassingly simple,” he said. Just as computing costs were plummeting, Scott reasoned it was inevitable that sequencing costs would also fall.

Perhaps more importantly was the concept of “the network effect.” Just as Metcalfe’s Law—the community value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users—drove change in the computing world, so too will it drive the future of biotechnology.

“Having a really cheap genome sequenced is really not very useful. We still see articles in The New York Times, ten years after the genome project, [saying] ‘so what?’ At some level, they’re horribly wrong, and at some level, they’re horribly right. We’ve not yet seen the network effect or the full implication of Moore’s Law.”

Scott said the community is still “1-2 years away from the inflection point” where the cost of sequencing reaches the point that will trigger “massive consumer demand.” The value of genome sequencing will be most strongly felt in the network effect. “How we connect that genomic information across millions and millions of individuals… Somebody can be sitting at a computer, link into the network, and find how a mutation and how it correlates with their patient and a patient somewhere else in the world.”

Scott said he was also a believer in what he called the “Law of Finite Genomes.” The human genome is like a complex finite puzzle with about 150,000 pieces (20,000 genes and 100,000 non-coding RNAs). “All common diseases are really rare diseases,” Scott said, with cancer a prime example. “Medicine goes from an infinite game to a finite game,” he said. By comparing lots of genomic information, we can begin to rule things out.

Patients, Patients, Patients 

Scott was inspired to launch Genomic Health when a close friend was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. For the first time, Scott was personally struck by the chasm between science/technology and medicine. “We’ve got to bridge the gap—bring the science into clinical practice,” he said.

The focus at Genomic Health, Scott said, was “patients, patients, patients.”

“I’m not sure we had a model other than this maniacal focus on patients that wouldn’t be denied,” he said. If we could really do the science right, the science would sell.” Genomic Health spent an enormous effort on clinical studies.

“Clinical data wins over physicians, and it is physicians that win over the payors,” Scott said. “The onus is on us as an industry to build the value proposition [for payors]… so physicians have to adopt those products. If physicians adopt, they will drive payers to cover.”

Scott left Genomic Health this year to launch InVitae, spurred by the impact of rare genetic diseases affecting members of his family.

In 2000, Scott’s nephew had a daughter with galactosemia. Fortunately, the disorder was diagnosed within 48 hours of birth, and her diet could be changed, otherwise there could have been “a dramatically different outcome.” In 2005, an adopted nephew collapsed on a tennis court and died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Advanced screening could have saved his life, but nobody knew any family history of cardiac disease, he said.

Finally, one of his wife’s relatives had a young son who developed serious seizures at age 2 years. The infant is developmentally impaired and severely autistic. Earlier this year, Scott revealed that exome sequencing of the child and his parents revealed a single de novo point mutation as the putative cause of the disorder. This is unlikely to provide any tangible medical benefit, but “it gives a clue into potential causes of these disorders,” he said.

Ridiculous Goal 

Scott said his goal in launching InVitae was to bring the power of genetics into the real world of clinical practice. “We have a ridiculous goal,” he said. “We want to aggregate all of the world’s genetic tests into a single assay—for less than the cost of a single assay today!”

In other words, InVitae plans to collapse all Mendelian inherited traits into a single assay that can be performed “reproducibly, at high quality and at reasonable cost for the medical system. So instead of going into these diagnostic odysseys… every parent thinking about conceiving a child can know exactly what their carrier status is and what disease risks lie in their family.”

The initial assay will essentially be an elaborate gene panel, but Scott’s plan is eventually that this will lead into whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Scott believes that “within 10-20 years, everyone in any developed health care system will be able to be provided with a low-cost [WGS] analysis at birth… We’ll be talking about managing your genome over the course of your lifetime.”

As for the question of how to deal with the plethora of data, “that’s Metcalfe’s Law, the network effect,” said Scott. “Much of the data won’t be of value to the patient or physician ordering the test. But collectively, they will be massively valuable to the research community.”

We’re big fans of “Free the Data!” said Scott. The universe of clinical genetic data “won’t be a database held by one company or one academic institution, but you’ll see a massive movement over the course of the next decade to make data broadly available within the research community.” This will create a huge disruption in medicine, Scott predicted, a shift from phenotypically driven medicine to more of a genotype foundation as sequencing costs fall and the network builds.

“Everything will drive off the genotype and it will move very fast,” he said. “This is a given. To me, this is the investment thesis. This will be the place to be, the chance to help people suffering from rare diseases. At the end of the day, every disease is rare.”

InVitae is building a strong management team. The company recently merged with Locus Development, a start-up co-founded by Sean George and Michele Cargill, founding scientists at Navigenics. Steve Lincoln and Jill Hagenkord, both formerly with Complete Genomics, also joined the cause this year, as did Reece Hart, former manager of research computing and informatics at Genentech.

– This article was first published at the Bio·IT World website on November 30, 2012.

Sustaining Progress in Personalized Medicine

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Harvard Personalized Medicine Conference in Boston, MA. No other conference on personalized medicine brings together the array of scientists, stakeholders, and experts that this event does. This year the conference drove home to me that the potential to improve patient care via personalized medicine is greater than ever – yet the scientific and clinical challenges remain daunting. It is more important than ever to sustain biomedical innovation, and to ensure that health policy is informed by the enormous opportunity, and complexity, of making continued progress in this field.

The event also underscored that biopharmaceutical research companies are deeply committed to advancing the science of personalized medicine and building it into their research and development strategies. It affirms findings of a report released by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in 2010 which found that 94% of biopharmaceutical companies surveyed are investing in personalized medicine and 100% are using biomarkers in the discovery stage to learn about compounds. This research has required large up-front investments in new research tools and training. But, as we have seen in the last year-and-a-half with FDA approval of new targeted therapies for lung cancer, melanoma, and cystic fibrosis, it is starting to bear fruit for patients.

I’m hopeful we’ll see more approvals in the months ahead. In the report from Tufts, companies reported that 12-50% of compounds being researched are personalized medicines and over the last five years, they have seen a roughly 75% increase in their investment in personalized medicines. The importance of personalized medicine was illustrated in the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which provides FDA with increased resources and staffing to advance the regulatory science in areas such as pharmacogenomics and biomarkers.

This progress, however, doesn’t happen in isolation. The Harvard Conference participants represented, and illustrated, the wide range of organizations and individuals from different sectors that make up the research ecosystem that drives progress in personalized medicine. As the science of personalized medicine advances, research partnerships and collaborations will be more important than ever. To sustain progress in personalized medicine, it is vitally important to ensure that policy and regulation do not erect barriers to these types of partnerships.

Biomedical innovations like personalized medicine will help address major unmet medical needs, and offer a solution to rising healthcare costs.  As we face continued pressure to contain healthcare costs, it is crucial to ensure that healthcare policy sustains the innovation ecosystem and incentivizes continued progress in personalized medicine.

Approaching One-Year Anniversary at FDA, Stephen Spielberg Highlights Agency’s Progress in Personalized Medicine

In his address to the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) Policy Committee at our most recent meeting, Stephen Spielberg, M.D., Ph.D., Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced that the Agency will develop a catalog of personalized medicine-related activities. The catalog, as Dr. Spielberg described, will provide a full accounting of the activities at the agency, including all regulatory divisions and regulatory science.

While reflecting on his 11-month tenure at the agency, Dr. Spielberg also noted that the largest area for advancing personalized medicine was through communication among stakeholders and FDA Centers.  He noted that “PMC is so important because we need dialogue; no one has a lock on complete information.”

The attendees of the policy meeting were pleased to hear that already, less than a year into Dr. Spielberg’s appointment at the agency, he was working to encourage collaboration and communication across divisions.  Dr. Spielberg was previously Director of the Center for Personalized Medicine and Therapeutic Innovation at Children’s Mercy Hospital, one of the founding members of the PMC and so has experience in bringing groups together to advance personalized medicine.

Dr. Spielberg outlined his optimism for personalized medicine at the FDA, noting that one third of the new drug approvals currently in review are for targeted or orphan indications.  He said that by year’s end, we could expect guidance documents on companion diagnostics and co-development, as well as the previously mentioned catalog.

These guidance documents and a FDA catalog may prove to be additional stepping stones to a broader understanding of the impact of personalized medicine on scientific research and clinical medicine.  At PMC, we will continue to work with FDA to promote broader engagement across the ecosystem of stakeholders and greater transparency around research and drug development.  We look forward to the issuance of these materials later this year and will engage a public discourse about them.

Progress in Cancer Highlighted by NEJM Retrospective; Turning the Tide Conference to Catalyze Comprehensive Dialogue on How to Sustain Cancer Innovation

In honor of the New England Journal of Medicine’s (NEJM’s) 200^th Anniversary, the journal examined how medicine has evolved over the last two centuries, looking in particular at oncology diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. But while there has been tremendous progress in cancer, questions remain:  Where do we go from here?  And how do we get there in an era of immense fiscal discipline?  These are questions that we plan to address on Tuesday at our conference, Turning the Tide Against Cancer Through Sustained Medical Innovation.

In a similar vein to what Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., a special guest speaker at the conference, lays out in his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, the authors of the NEJM article “Two Hundred Years of Cancer Research” provide a timeline of major discoveries and advances in cancer research and care.

They show how each milestone is built on the ones that came before it and trace the evolution of cancer progress from the early efforts to control the disease through surgery, advances in radiation, chemotherapy, and the targeted therapies that are redefining cancer treatment today.

The underlying science that made these treatment advances possible takes years to translate into clinical benefits for patients, but the original investments pay off. Our understanding of the genetic basis of cancer became possible only after decades of work on the basic biology of DNA beginning in the 1940s and 50s, but it was not until after the sequencing of the human genome that researchers were able to begin to translate genetics knowledge into new medicines.

Genetic understandings of cancer have led to breakthrough new medicines such as Xalkori® (for non-small cell lung cancer) and Zelboraf® (for melanoma) and more targeted therapies are on the way.  A new report issued by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) found that there are 981 new medicines and vaccines for cancer in development today, many of which are likely to be personalized medicines.

Tomorrow’s progress in cancer therapies and treatment approaches depend on today’s policy makers recognizing the need for policies that holistically support cancer research and innovation.  In advance of next week’s conference, a Discussion Paper “Sustaining Progress Against Cancer in an Era of Cost Containment” coalesces the views of the conference advisory committee and other leading cancer experts about new models for cancer innovation, how to define value in cancer care, and how policy can support continued progress against cancer.

PCORI Research Priorities, Will They Support Personalized Medicine?

The Board of Directors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) met last week, outlined research priorities, and asked for public feedback. What I found most interesting, and a little disheartening, is that the priorities are drafted in vague language, making it difficult to determine how they may (or may not) support personalized medicine.

I hope that as PCORI moves forward, it will give assurance to the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) and other stakeholders that its research supports personalized medicine, as was the intent of Congress at the time of the Institute’s formation.

Specifically, research conducted in the category, “Comparative Assessment of Options for Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment,” will compare treatments, but at what level?  Researchers now know more about individual response to some drugs based on biomarker information. For example, when comparing a red pill to a blue pill, it is imperative that biomarker information be included in those examinations, especially when biomarker information is in the label for the drug. A list of drugs with biomarker information in the label can be found on pages 20-25 of The Case for Personalized Medicine, 3^rd edition. But, without clearly defining the details of PCORI’s research, we really can’t know whether or how the Institute will consider biomarker information in its priorities and research agenda.

The research priority “Improving Healthcare System” can support patient-centered care through innovations, but how? PMC suggests that the research be predictive, preventative, personalized and participatory. By emphasizing the “4Ps,” health system evaluation can support personalized medicine. However, without getting more specific about research priorities, we don’t know whether PCORI will include research that addresses these aspects of care delivery.

To support personalized medicine, the “Communication and Dissemination Research” priority should require researchers to answer one question: “Why does this treatment work and for whom?” (or, more frequently, “How likely is this treatment to work for me, and what are the potential trade-offs?”).  It is not enough, in the PMC’s opinion, to say that one therapy works for most people. PMC suggests that the research should explain why a therapy works (or is more likely to work) and for whom. For example, in research comparing red and blue pills, the communication and dissemination of the research results should stress that although the red pill works for most, the blue pill is particularly effective for people with a specific biomarker.

We are at a pivotal stage in the design of an entity that is tasked with assisting patients, clinicians, purchasers and policymakers in making informed, evidenced-based health decisions. PCORI could foster research that answers the important questions about what interventions work, and for whom. Or, PCORI could be another investigator-driven research institute that allows funded researchers to pursue questions of great scientific import, regardless of their practicality. Such a mission would be redundant with many others, most notably the National Institutes of Health, would be less likely to result in a cohesive national research program, and less likely to ensure personalized medicine is appropriately integrated.

It is my hope that PCORI supports the science that will drive personalized medicine forward, and will engage stakeholders in driving personalized medicine forward, by proposing specific research priorities and research questions to get answers to the questions that science, medicine and, ultimately, patients demand.

Using Cancer(s) as a Model for Advancing Personalized Medicine

I am pleased to be attending this year’s Personalized Medicine Conference taking place this week and appreciate the opportunity to discuss why I, and many others, believe that cancer, or to be more accurate “cancers”, are an ideal model for the discovery, translation and delivery of personalized medicine.  Sheer numbers alone are reason enough to highlight the need for developing a personalized approach to cancer care: 1 out of 2 men and 1 out of 3 women will develop cancer in their lifetime in the United States.

The sequencing of the human genome has unraveled many mysteries as to how a normal cell can go awry and become cancerous. Further understanding of not only the genetics of cancer, but also the biology and metabolism of cancer, have increased our knowledge of biologic systems that support cancer progression, and this new knowledge has been translated into novel strategies for early detection, prevention and treatment.  And yet, these new discoveries that have heightened expectations of success have, in large part, fallen short in delivering cures anticipated by society.  The reality is that we have learned that cancer is actually an array of many diseases masquerading under the single name of “cancer.”   We need to learn to embrace the complexity of this disease we call cancer and stop the attitude of tunnel vision to cure cancer, and instead focus more on caring for the patient, the individual.  National policy must promote the search for solutions, not just cures.  Ultimately by providing solutions, we will reduce, and in many cases, eliminate death and suffering due to cancer.

In order to accelerate what is a continuum of discovery, translation and delivery of personalized medicine, or in this case personalized cancer care, multiple stakeholders must come together to pursue and deliver this common goal.  These stakeholders include researchers, clinicians, administrators (including policymakers and regulators), and of course, patients themselves.  This week’s gathering of the personalized medicine community in Boston is an example of the value of physically bringing together these stakeholders, and is an important forum for the discussion, exchange of ideas, and aligning of objectives that are crucial to the advancement of personalized medicine.

Total Cancer Care: An Approach to Creating Solutions for the Advancement of Cancer Research and Improved Care

Building on the themes of this year’s event – Personalized Medicine: Impacting Healthcare – I would like to describe to you one approach to personalized cancer care that is having a significant impact on the lives of patients. Nearly eight years ago, the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., launched the Total Cancer Care™ initiative with the goal of identifying all the needs of a patient and developing a means to meet those needs.  By focusing on solutions to meet individual needs, we believed we could reduce death and suffering due to cancer, and that in order to do so we needed to develop strategic partnerships to perform the five following aims:

1. Create a system to identify the needs of individual patients
2. Identify markers that would predict needs and risks so that interventions could become preemptive
3. Identify molecular signatures for patients who are not likely to respond to standard of care
4. Utilize clinical characteristics and molecular profiling techniques to match the right patient to the right treatment at the right time and the right place
5. Raise the standard of care for all patients by integrating new technologies in an evidenced based approach to maximize benefits and reduce costs

Critical to the pursuit of these solutions was the development of a large regional cancer biorepository in parallel with the development of a relational data warehouse and an information system containing patient’s clinical data and molecular data. 

We soon recognized that although Moffitt had a large patient population to study and engage in this endeavor, to accomplish our goal, we ultimately needed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of patients to study, and we sought the advice and support of our Florida network of hospitals and physicians.  To our pleasure, there was universal enthusiasm from our statewide colleagues to participate in what became the Total Cancer Care™ Protocol.  Dr. Tim Yeatman at Moffitt was the original Principal Investigator of this IRB- approved protocol which enrolled its first patient in 2006 and basically asked for patients’ consent to do three things:

1. Can we follow you throughout your lifetime by collecting and storing your clinical data and information?
2. May we study any excess tumor or normal tissue using molecular profiling techniques?
3. May we re-contact you?

What began at Moffitt within a year had been extended to eight different communities in Florida.  Within two years, this effort expanded to nine more communities in 10 different states, for a total of 18 participating sites.  Together, the 18 different sites form the Total Cancer Care™ Consortium with the aim of informing and consenting patients to the Total Cancer Care™ Protocol.  As of November 1, 63,754 patients have consented to the Total Cancer Care™ Protocol; 21,331 tumors have been collected and stored in a high technology biorepository located at Moffitt; and 15,093 tumors have been profiled using gene expression profiling technology.  To my knowledge, this effort makes Total Cancer Care™ one of the largest, if not the largest, prospective observational studies with tumor collection in the world. 

Ultimately, our community colleagues are not only contributors to establishing the foundation of personalized cancer care, but also the beneficiaries by being able to use the information system as a clinical decision tool, and as a means of quality performance and comparative effectiveness research.

In coming weeks, I am looking forward to further discussing the role of comparative effectiveness research in Total Cancer Care ™, and how the patient is not only a participant, but also the ultimate beneficiary of everything we do.