US Government Funding Initiative Includes Spotlight on Tissue Diagnostics

Precision medicine includes taking into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles. As part of a USD 215 million investment, the initiative aims at promoting “patient-powered research” that “promises to accelerate biomedical discoveries and provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients.” These will be facilitated through tissue and cell diagnostics, according to Kalorama. Kalorama extensively covered the tissue diagnostics (histology) and cell-based (cytology) industry in its recent report “The World Market for Tissue Diagnostics and Cell-Based Diagnostics.”

“Any program that focuses attention on precision medicine is going to be good news for histology and cytology testing,” said Bruce Carlson, Kalorama publisher, “These types of tests are the main pathway to individual testing.”

Driven by new technologies and the need to discover biomarkers, the tissue and cell-based diagnostic market grew to an estimated USD 7.4 billion in revenues in 2013 for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) and other clinical laboratory reagents. The field is increasingly automated, and new technologies being applied include mass spectrometry, DNA sequencing, circulating tumor cells, and others. Kalorama’s report contains additional trends, including breakouts of important segments and profiling scores of companies. Geographic breakdowns are also provided.

Funding proposals in the [US] President’s budget include 5 main areas. USD 130 million to US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for development of a voluntary national research cohort of volunteers to propel understanding and set the foundation for conducting research through engaged participants and open, responsible data sharing. USD 70 million to NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) to scale up efforts to identify genomic drivers in cancer and apply that knowledge in development of more effective treatment approaches. USD 10 million to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to acquire additional expertise and advance development of high quality, curated databases to support the regulatory structure needed to advance innovation. USD 5 million to US Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to support development of interoperability standards and requirements that address privacy and enable secure exchange of data across systems.

Related Links:
Kalorama Information
World Market for Tissue Diagnostics and Cell-Based Diagnostics, report