Will the Precision Medicine Industry Bounce Back?

At the recent Personalized Medicine Coalition Conference, frank talk and inspiring patient stories

Precision medicine has become the catch-all term for converting discoveries in biology to individualized medicine and wellness. Because human biology has become much more precise and personalized, so too is medicine. For the last twenty years, many of the discoveries have come from sequencing the human genome, the underlying theory being that our DNA directly determines our health. If DNA is the code of life, then it's also the code of disease.

However, 2023 has been a tough year for the precision medicine industry. Some say the industry has been in crisis. Almost all the major genetic testing companies have endured sizable layoffs and/or restructuring. Invitae shed 30% of their workforce. Sema4/GeneDx became just GeneDx and cut their reproductive health testing. The same story of downsizing has been true across biotech and pharma. The lead sequencing tools company, Illumina--after a fifteen-year run that made investors giddy with wonder--has been suffering. One of our guests recently called 2023 an annus horribilis for the company, the term England's Queen Elizabeth used for 1992, the year Windsor Castle burned.