President Obama Announces New Precision Medicine Initiative

I was honored to represent NCCS along with leaders in the health care community at the White House on Friday when President Obama announced his new Precision Medicine Initiative. Introducing the President was 19-year-old Harvard Student Elana Simon, who researched her own liver cancer and helped identify the genetic cause of the rare disease. The President’s budget request, which will be released February 2, will include $215 million for the programs outlined, including $70 million for the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

In a blog post, NCI Director Dr. Harold Varmus describes what the initiative means for cancer patients and the NCI’s research efforts. “After decades of research, we are poised to enter a new era of medical practice where detailed genetic and other molecular information about a patient’s cancer is routinely used to deploy effective, patient-specific remedies to treat it.”