BIO responds to President Obama's State of the Union speech

In his State of the Union speech to the American public this week, US President Barak Obama said that the White House is launching the Precision Medicine Initiative, to invest resources into medical research and technology, but provided little elaboration.

The President stated: “I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine  -  one that delivers the right treatment at the right time.…Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes  -  and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier.”

Responding to the announcement, the US Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) president and chief executive Jim Greenwood said: “Having long advocated a large scale genomics project to help understand the basis of chronic disease, I was pleased to hear President Obama’s words about its promise, and look forward to working with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Chairman Fred Upton, Congresswoman Diana DeGette, and members of the Energy and Commerce Committee through the 21st Century Cures Initiative and the Senate to develop a study that can revolutionize our understanding of disease.