Dan Roarty: They say that necessity is oftentimes the mother of invention. That’s never been more true than it is today. We’re all experiencing a global human tragedy and an economic crisis, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. But we know that disruption often triggers innovation and changes in industries that can create opportunities for companies and also for investors.
Here with me today is Ed Bryan, a research analyst specializing in the healthcare sector. Ed, can you tell us about what theme you’re most excited about within healthcare today?
Ed Bryan: The personalization of health care, a theme that’s benefiting from two powerful forces. Firstly, the massive improvements in cost and ease of DNA sequencing, where the price has recently fallen to levels where countries and companies have made the decision to invest in population-level DNA sequencing studies.
Secondly, network effects. So, each new genome that’s sequenced can be compared to other genomes to help make sense of all the 3 billion base pairs and what the differences and mutations mean.
Biotech pipelines are now filling up with drugs that are the result of discoveries being made with genomic sequencing across much larger patient populations, across a range of disease areas. So this theme is still very much in its early phases.
