Policymakers urged to accentuate personalised medicine benefits

Policymakers have been urged to "do more" to demonstrate the impact and potential benefits of personalised medicine. The demand came at the launch of a 'Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda' (SRIA) report in Brussels on Tuesday (2 June).

It was produced by PerMed, a Coordination and Support Action group of 27 partners. PerMed is financed by the European Commission and representing patients’ interests as well as decision makers in research policy, health care and implementation.

Its aims are backed by Romanian EPP deputy Cristian Busoi,who said: “There is a distinct need for much more coordination when it comes to research policy in the EU. “At the moment there is far too much fragmentation and duplication, wasting valuable time and resources, and slowing down innovation.”  His comments are endorsed by Irish deputy Marian Harkin, MEP, who added: “Targeted investment in medical research needs to be stepped up, and Big Data issues solved, if we are to unlock the potential of personalised medicine for the benefit of all 500 million citizens across 28 member states.”

The deputies were speaking ahead of the launch of the report in the University Foundation.  PerMed is tasked with generating recommendations and research activities aimed at fostering the further implementation of personalised medicine – a fast-emerging method of treating patients on an individualised basis that is largely based on genetic make-up.

The SRIA report presented on Tuesday is based on an analysis of several recent strategic reports, plus interviews and consultations with experts and representatives of all relevant stakeholders in the arena of personalised medicine.  The SRIA examined current challenges before suggesting prioritised recommendations with the highest potential in facilitating the introduction this "exciting new form of treatment".

Personalised medicine is said to hold the promise of improving the quality of life for EU citizens, while also cutting costs in the long term and encouraging investment in research and innovation.  The report’s recommendations include an urgent need to: demonstrate the impact and potential benefits of personalised medicine for health systems, by supporting public health evaluations and incorporate patient participation and responsibility in all phases of research and development and in the ownership and control of personal health data. It also wants to develop common principles and regulatory frameworks that enable the ethical sharing of personal data for research.

Other recommendations highlight the need to: promote the development of high-quality sustainable databases; support translational research infrastructures and enforce data harmonisation; develop new decision-support tools and methodologies to analyse and interpret data, and; better integrate and evaluate information provided by genomic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and micro-biome analyses.  Also said to be "vital" is the development of new clinical trial designs as well as a systematic early dialogue between innovators, citizens and decision-makers throughout all regulatory steps.  Also present at the launch was the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine (EAPM), one of the PerMed partners.

The Brussels-based multi-stakeholder organisation believes that recognising the importance of translational research is "crucial" in terms of the integration of personalised medicine into European health systems.  The Alliance has also called for the development of a European Translational Research Platform (ETRP) that enables the efficient conversion of exciting research discoveries to innovative diagnostics, therapeutics, products and processes that will benefit European patients, industries and societies.

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