015年1月22日讯 /生物谷BIOON/ --对全世界来说，每年年初美国总统国情咨文都是全世界关注的焦点，对于医药行业也不例外。
2014年奥巴马政府在生物医药领域采取了一系列动作，反映出了美国政府力争在这一领域中保证领先地位的决心。
首先是BRAIN计划的提出，让学术界见到了另一次生物技术高潮的来临。在该项目中，科学家的主要目的包括精确分辨大脑中的细胞类型，建立检测大脑活动的新技术等对于人类大脑研究具有突破性意义的领域。其次是为了抑制今年美国生物医药企业的海外兼并变更注册地对美国生物医药业的冲击，美国财政部采取紧急措施。这些措施也直接导致艾伯维收购Shire公司计划胎死腹中。
不过，在本周二的这次国情咨文中，奥巴马再次透露了美国政府对生物医药产业投资和研发的重视。同时，他还在报告中着重提到了个性化治疗疗法的开发。奥巴马称希望利用已取得的人类基因组图谱来开辟一个为患者量身定制疗法的新时代。同时，他还以囊包性纤维症为例，指出这一趋势是不可避免的。这被一些分析人士解读为在未来一段时间内，美国将大力发展个性化疗法的信号。不过，这些还只是推测，具体的信息要等到今年2月2日奥巴马政府发表政府预算报告才能揭晓。
不过，以去年为例，NIH在奥巴马政府的倡导下，提出了一项BRAIN计划，旨在推动神经科学领域的发展，整个计划长达十年，并将投入45亿美元的资金。无独有偶，去年英国的National Health Service提出到2017年，英国将要对10万名英国人进行测序以更好的了解一些疾病的发病机理。这或许会为NIH提供一定的借鉴。
其实公允的来说，个性化治疗已经不是一个新概念，目前市场上尤其是肿瘤市场上已经有类似的药物上市。但是，奥巴马政府如今的态度将可能为这一研究领域再添一把柴。
而反观中国，一直以来，中国在生物医药领域的相关政策都会紧跟美国政府。那么从此次奥巴马国情咨文来看，中国生物医药产业是否也会在不久的将来迎来个性化治疗的研发高潮？
详细英文报道：
Speaking before a global audience of millions, President Barack Obama threw his support behind the potential of personalized medicine, skimping on details but hinting at a federally funded R&D effort in keeping with the $4.5 billion BRAIN Initiative.
During Tuesday's State of the Union address, Obama talked up the need for--and economic benefit of--investing in R&D, highlighting the particular promise of targeted therapies crafted for patients with specific genetic variations.
"I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine?--?one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable," he said, as a man treated with Vertex Pharmaceuticals' ($VRTX) gene-tailored CF drug Kalydeco sat next to first lady Michelle Obama.
"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."
Just what that will entail remains unclear, at least until Obama presents his fiscal 2016 budget on Feb. 2, likely providing details on the scope and cost of the new effort.
For clues, however, one might look to 2013's BRAIN Initiative, through which the National Institutes of Health plans to dole out $4.5 billion in grants over 10 years with hopes of broadly advancing the field of neuroscience. Applying that model to genomic-minded therapeutic development, the Precision Medicine Initiative could focus on projects designed to better find druggable targets amid the deluge of datanow available via inexpensive next-generation sequencing. NIH may also take a cue from the U.K.'s National Health Service, which last year announced a plot to sequence the genomes of 100,000 Britons by 2017 in an effort to better understand human disease.
Personalized therapies are hardly new, of course, and Kalydeco is among the many such drugs already on the market, particularly in oncology. But Obama's co-sign, however vague, puts the field in a spotlight not often granted to life sciences researchers and could galvanize a wealth of public interest in what has been a long-brewing aspect of biopharma R&D.