Personalised medicine in Europe: is the patent system keeping up?

In the not-so-distant past, obtaining patent protection for a new therapeutic drug (or new use of a known drug) was simpler than it is today. The therapeutic landscape was comparatively unexplored, and our knowledge of disease pathology was uninformed by the battery of molecular techniques available today. This lack of detailed information meant the factors to consider when assessing a new therapeutic application were relatively few and, consequently, the required analysis was relatively straightforward.