Personalized Medicine and Data Science at PLSG
June 2016 – In a discussion with James Jordan of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG), we talked about the directions in research and the shifts in university, industry and government roles in the development of medial solutions. The role of the development environment has changed based on the limited number of venture capitalists in the space (now approx. 100). As it is a small community, everyone knows each other, so the focus of the funding is on the people and perceived market size.
PLSG at Bio 2016
One of the key shifts in the drug development and marketing space is the shift toward personalized medicine as a method of disease management and illness remediation. This is directing government backed research funding into the private sector for big pharma and industrial companies to partner with universities and startups that have more flexibility and diversity on ideas and product innovation.
Over the next 12+ years, the drug and medication industry is transitioning to a data based characterization model. The development of medications that can provide tracking and sensor based metrics will revolutionize the ability to treat patients based on their abilities and reactions of their own systems to the medication. The use of the medication as a data collection vehicle on individuals has issues beyond the technical challenges. For this reason the PLSG is working the CMU public policy school to interpret and predict the policies and challenges regarding the collection, storage and use of this data. These policy decisions cover both the research mode use and the public use phase after the development is completed.
A number of aspects of the personalized medication programs interact with and overlap with genomic research going on at multiple facilities. The foundation of the PLSG is the cooperation between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Pittsburgh’s regional foundation community, which created the group as a public/private partnership. This overlap and cooperation allows the PLSG to deliver life sciences from Concept to Commercialization™.
