Precision medicine at the academic-industry interface

Precision medicine, and specifically the test-then-treat paradigm, have been common practice in medicine for over a century. Recent advances in high-throughput omics, notably next-generation sequencing, have enabled resolution of clinically actionable differences at the molecular level and facilitated greater understanding of human pathogenesis at the individual population scales. These new analytic technologies, coupled with a growing number of therapeutic agents designed to target specific molecules, has catalyzed the transition of treatment modalities from anatomically/pathologically defined interventions, to algorithm-based treatments, rooted on molecularly defined endpoints. Underlying the bifurcated population health-molecular disease perspective is the capability to curate highly granular clinical data, at the case level and throughout the lifecycle of disease. Academic medical centers are at the forefront of developing infrastructure to interface with these challenges, and are thus, a focal point of industry engagement, in the development and validation of precision medicine technology, products, and decision rules.