According to the top industry experts, in less than 50 years medicine as practiced today will be considered primitive, much as we consider medicine of the Middle Ages to have been raw and unsophisticated. The report begins with a review of the traditional drug development process, as well as a brief overview of human genetics. It then explains and explores predictive medicine, in which a patient fs genetic makeup will be the springboard to either prevent occurrence of a disease, or to personalise treatment according to the patient fs genotype.
Predictive medicine promises to decrease the cost and time involved in bringing new drugs to market.
By partnering with pharmacogenomics companies, pharmaceutical companies stand to save millions of dollars and many months of drug development time. The report explores the major alliances between pharmacogenomic companies and the big pharma firms, and gives a survey of some of the genetic test kits already appearing on the market. The advent of this field is stirring up whirlpools of controversy. Predictive Medicine introduces the developing ethical and legal challenges, as well as the implications for health insurers and health care systems alike. The document wraps up with strategic profiles of several leading companies in predictive medicine.