Challenges and solutions for personalizing medicines

Policy makers, health professionals, research leaders, and funders in academia and industry interested in healthcare have a major current challenge. What to do about personalizing healthcare in the face of twin pressures from increasing costs of healthcare and major restraints on national and international funding? The encouraging evidence is that investing now is likely at least to reduce many aspects of per person costs of healthcare, in some cases with evidence for associated improvement in clinical outcomes, and with potential for added value for society from the impact on national economies from innovation in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other health industry sectors.In this paper, we discuss opportunities to accelerate the discovery and development both of safer and more effective medicines, and their companion diagnostics, through personalizing medicines by new pharmacological approaches, combined with innovative chemical biology,