President Barack Obama will request hundreds of millions of dollars for his Precision Medicine Initiative, administration officials said in a report from The New York Times.
The initiative was unveiled last week during the State of the Union, although a great amount of detail was not given.
Under the Precision Medicine Initiative, the National Institutes of Health would receive money to support biomedical research, according to the report. Money would also go toward the regulation of diagnostic tests by the Food and Drug Administration.
The diagnostic tests, which examine the DNA in normal or diseased tissue, help physicians determine which patients with cancer or other diseases are most likely to see benefits from a particular treatment — and which patients would not, according to the report.
President Obama said during his State of the Union address, "Twenty-first century businesses will rely on American science, technology, research and development. 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. 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."
The New York Times reported that more details about Pres. Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative will be in his budget in the coming weeks.
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