The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) Executive Vice President for Health Policy Dan Durham released the following statement regarding the White House announcement of actions to accelerate the Precision Medicine Initiative:

“Precision medicine holds great promise for many health care interventions to occur much earlier and with increased accuracy. We applaud this move to begin building a national, large-scale research participant group to accelerate precision medicine technologies. The data and discoveries resulting from this Initiative may play a critical role in enabling biopharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for patients before or early on in their disease progression, and with therapeutics that are far more effective and focused on the specific characteristics of their particular disease.

“We hope that as plans for the Initiative continue to take shape, Congress and the Administration will consider the tremendous potential of this research participant group to implement a multi-phase, multi-study, multi-year program to identify precursors and early signs of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s that threaten the health of our loved ones and undermine our nations’ own fiscal health. BIO proposed such a program as part of the 21st Century Cures Initiative.

“We look forward to working with the Administration and Congress to ensure that the discoveries and information resulting from the Initiative will serve to advance patient health and improve the drug development and review processes.”