中国精准医疗的未来

自美国总统奥巴马2015年初宣布启动新的医疗研究努力——精准医疗计划以来，中国也在指定自己更大的精准医疗项目。中国一些领先研究机构包括清华大学、复旦大学以及中国医学科学院都纷纷建立精准医学中心。例如四川大学华西医院计划完成一百万个人体基因序列，与整个美国的计划目标相同。

中国政府有望在今年3月份批准下一个五年计划，尽管目前还不清楚将会投入多少资金，但几乎可以肯定的是， 会比美国2.15亿美元的计划规模更大，投入的资金更多。

今年1月9日，中国科学院宣布启动“中国人群精准医学研究计划”，将在4年内完成4,000名志愿者的基因信息采集。

当前中国一些基因测序公司已相继竞争提供测序服务，中国多年以来为超高的基因测序能力而引以为傲。2010年，总部位于深圳的基因研究院华大基因估测其测序能力超过了整个美国。但这也要感谢其从加州圣迭戈的Illumina公司购买的设备，这些设备在当时代表着最为尖端的技术。但中国的其他基因公司随后也从Illumina公司购买了升级后的产品，包括来自上海的药明康德和云健康基因，以及来自北京的诺禾致源。

美国国立卫生研究院院长弗朗西斯•柯林斯于2015年大连夏季达沃斯论坛上表示，他希望在未来看到中美双方在精准医疗上更多的合作。

我认为，中国在基因序列和识别突变基因这些与个性化治疗相关的方面发展会比美国迅速，这是因为中国每种疾病都有庞大的病患数量，使得研究拥有足够的样本，加之中国政府对成功的决心。然而，中国能否将这些发现都应用到患者的个性化治疗上面，仍然有待观察。

The future of precision medicine in China

Since US President Barack Obama unveiled the new medical research effort called Precision Medicine Initiative at early 2015, China has been finalizing plans for its own, much larger project. China’s leading institutes — including Tsinghua University, Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences — are scrambling to set up precision-medicine centres. Sichuan University’s West China Hospital, for instance, plans to sequence 1 million human genomes itself — the same goal as the entire US initiative.

The Chinese government is expected to officially announce the initiative after it approves its next five-year plan in March. Just how much the effort will cost is unclear — but it will almost certainly be larger and more expensive than the US$215-million US initiative.

On January 9^th, the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) announced its precision medicine research plan targeting Chinese people, which will spend four years colleting genetic information of 4,000 volunteers.

Genome-sequencing companies are already competing to provide services to deal with the anticipated demand. For several years, China has boasted high genome-sequencing capacity. In 2010, the genomics institute BGI in Shenzhen was estimated to host more sequencing capacity than the entire United States. This was thanks to its equipment, purchased from Illumina of San Diego, California, which at the time represented state-of-the-art technology. But Illumina has since sold upgraded machines to at least three other genomics firms — WuXi PharmaTech and Cloud Health, both in Shanghai, and the Beijing-based firm Novogene.

Francis S. Collins, the director of the US National Institutes for Health, spoke at Summer Davos in Dalian in September 2015 that someday he would like to see the United States and China cooperate more on precision medicine.

As far as I’m concerned, China will be faster than the United States at sequencing genomes and identifying mutations that are relevant to personalized medicine because China’s larger populations of patients for each disease will make it easier to find sufficient numbers to study, combined with the Chinese government’s determination to succeed. Still, it remains to be seen whether China has the resources to apply these insights to the individualized care of patients due to the dearth of doctors.