Senator Collins Questions Top Health Officials On New Frontier Of ‘Precision Medicine’
Washington, D.C. – During a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing today, U.S. Senator Susan Collins questioned the nation’s top health officials on the advancement of precision medicine as well as the opportunities and challenges presented by this new frontier in American medicine. Precision medicine is an exciting approach to disease prevention and treatment that effectively tailors medical treatment to the individual genetic profile of each patient.
In his 2015 State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled details of a Precision Medicine Initiative which would set the foundation for a new model of patient-powered research to better understand health and disease through a cohort of one million or more patient volunteers.
In the hearing, Senator Collins questioned Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of Health, about concerns she heard from brain tumor research advocates from Maine representing the National Brain Tumor Society. The Senator also asked whether there is “a role for precision medicine in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS.”
To this question, Dr. Collins answered in part, “for any disease that is common enough that you are going to have thousands in your one million strong cohort, you will have an opportunity to study those on a scale that has not been previously possible…I think one of the exciting aspects of having this very large cohort is that it doesn’t have to be just about heart disease, or just about diabetes, or just about Alzheimer’s disease. It can be about all of those things because it will have the scale to do so. We have waited a long time to reach the point where the technology would make that possible and the time is now. We have really reached a remarkable inflection point in the potential of medical research and we should not let this moment pass.”
Click here to download a video of Senator Collins’ and Dr. Francis Collins’ full exchange.
Click here for a photo from Senator Collins’ meeting in Washington, DC, with brain tumor research advocates from Maine.
In his 2015 State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled details of a Precision Medicine Initiative which would set the foundation for a new model of patient-powered research to better understand health and disease through a cohort of one million or more patient volunteers.
In the hearing, Senator Collins questioned Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of Health, about concerns she heard from brain tumor research advocates from Maine representing the National Brain Tumor Society. The Senator also asked whether there is “a role for precision medicine in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS.”
To this question, Dr. Collins answered in part, “for any disease that is common enough that you are going to have thousands in your one million strong cohort, you will have an opportunity to study those on a scale that has not been previously possible…I think one of the exciting aspects of having this very large cohort is that it doesn’t have to be just about heart disease, or just about diabetes, or just about Alzheimer’s disease. It can be about all of those things because it will have the scale to do so. We have waited a long time to reach the point where the technology would make that possible and the time is now. We have really reached a remarkable inflection point in the potential of medical research and we should not let this moment pass.”
Click here to download a video of Senator Collins’ and Dr. Francis Collins’ full exchange.
Click here for a photo from Senator Collins’ meeting in Washington, DC, with brain tumor research advocates from Maine.
