Precision medicine: getting patenting spot on

Precision medicine is an emerging approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease which is tailored to the individual characteristics of each patient. It relies on the classification of individuals into subpopulations that differ in their susceptibility to a particular disease, in the biology or prognosis of disease, or in their response to a specific treatment. The advent of cheap genome sequencing and ‘big data’ analysis brings unprecedented opportunity for the development of patient-targeted diagnostics and therapies based on genetic profiles.