Pursuing ‘the Science of the One:’ A Keynote Address on the Status and Outlook for Personalized Medicine in a Post-Pandemic World

With entire nations in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic in March of 2020, globally renowned author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., D.Phil., published a groundbreaking article in The New Yorker in which he suggested that infected patients whose bodies contain higher concentrations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be more likely to develop life-threatening cases of disease. If this were true, he posited, health care decision-makers might be able to use quantitative measurements of viral concentrations in blood or mucus samples to get more intensive interventions to the sickest patients, sooner.

This was not the first foray into personalized medicine for Dr. Mukherjee, who is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer and The Gene: An Intimate History. Nor would it be his last.

In a provocative essay published almost two years later in The Wall Street Journal on December 18, 2021, for example, Dr. Mukherjee asked whether genetically based pre-screening and biomarker-based early detection blood tests may transform the cancer care landscape into “an all-encompassing kingdom of the ill.” The article recognized the promise of detecting cancers at earlier stages, when they may be easier and less expensive to treat. But it also highlighted the story of a now-healthy patient haunted by the prospect that her cancer may return. Cancer, Dr. Mukherjee writes, “holds a special place in the anxious imagination.” This anxiety could take hold of too much of the patient population, Dr. Mukherjee contends, if new screening and detection tools reveal genetic risks and early-stage cancers that cause more psychological than physical harm.

The Personalized Medicine Coalition has commissioned Dr. Mukherjee to further develop his thinking about the future of personalized medicine in the post-pandemic era. He will share novel insights on November 15.