In these videos Pfizer’s Vice President and Global Head of Molecular Medicine, Aidan Power, talk about a future where everyone’s genome is sequenced and drug prescriptions are based on your genetic makeup, and argues that personalized medicine will be the defining paradigm for discovering and developing drugs of the future.
To put these videos into context, consider the recent report which found that a majority of patients receiving Herceptin had not been tested for HER-2 overexpression — Herceptin is a targeted drug intended primarily for patients overexpressing HER-2. The apparently common prescription of Herceptin independent of it’s diagnostic test suggests that the practice of medicine needs to adapt to keep pace with scientific advance.