The White House has introduced the "precision medicine" initiative, which aims to analyze the DNA of at least one million American volunteers for research and development of medicines that will be based on the genetic structure of the patient.
The latest initiative, announced on Friday, will be given a $216 million budget to create a new research model that will make medical innovations faster. Gone are the days that treatment is based on the "average patient."
The precision medicine initiative will offer varying treatments depending on the DNA of the patients but deliver the same positive results. The government plans to kick off the initiative for cancer patients then extend it to other diseases if they get affirmative results.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), admitted that the $216 million budget is not enough to fund the sequencing alone. He estimated that they would need at least $1 billion based on a $1,000 per genome rate, according to Reuters. They plan to use genetic data collected by earlier studies to reach the target headcount.
The budget is yet to be approved by Congress. Republicans, who are known to oppose Obama's healthcare initiatives, seem to support this plan as it could save more lives and cut healthcare cost.
"All Americans are directly or indirectly affected by a disease or disability, so even in a divisive Congress and resource constrained environment, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle must work in a bipartisan fashion to support the 'Precision Medicine Initiative,'" Mary Woolley, CEO of Research!America, told Forbes.
The NIH for the genome sequencing will recieve $130 million, while $70 million will go to the National Cancer Institute for the study of the genetic causes of cancer. The FDA will be awarded $10 million for the evaluation of drugs and devices, and the remaining $5 million will be used for the genetic database.
