The Next Big Thing: Personalized Medicine

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/28/illumina-life-genomics-personal-finance-guru-insight-nih-genes.html

If you were looking to invest in the medical field, what area would you trust your money to? According to Forbes.com, genomics is the next big thing. During the 1980s and 90s, there was a large increase in government funding via programs such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) which helped to make the information that researcher's had discovered commercially usable. In the past 20 years, the NIH's budget has increased to a whopping 27 billion dollars thanks to the government becoming more and more open to the idea that developments in the biotechnology area could become profitable. Under the new Obama administration, the NIH budget will continue to grown allowing for even more expansion in the biotech field.
According to Forbes, the genomics and personalized medicine areas are the most likely to benefit from this funding surge. If a doctor knows his patients particular genetic make up, it will be way easier for doctors to prescribe patients medicine based on a better understanding of the efficacy of that individual.
In the past decade, the cost of genome sequencing has vastly fallen. In 2003 sequencing cost 300 million, but today sequencing cost less than 10,00 dollars. And it is estimated that within the next year the price will fallow below 1000, and soon enough be able to become a part of everyday health care. With genotyping this affordable, it is only a matter of time until personalized medicine becomes a reality.
But even as this information becomes more available to us, making it profitable may prove a harder task than previously thought. Obviously with the expansion of genomics will come a boom in technology and innovation in tools used to do this, but making these machines cost effective is the riddle. Forbes does mention one company in particular who manufactures these type of genoming machines called Illumina. The article states that they expect sales of Illumina's shares to increase by 30 percent by the end of 2009. Not too bad. Even though this is only one manufacturer of these machines one can see how a growing biotech industry has a positive effect on our economy.
At the end of the article Forbes leaves us with one golden piece of advice: "Genomics may be the "next big thing" after the Internet and biotech. Finding those who can make money early on will likely pay dividends to investors." Now if only it were that easy......