Precision Medicine, Diabetes, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Abstract

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long sought to achieve the broader use of personalized medicine, which is better targeting of FDA-approved therapies through incorporating precise knowledge of a patient's underlying condition to therapies optimally chosen to match those needs. While some strides have been made in precision medicine-particularly in oncology and rare genetic diseases-most of the standard general medicine indications have yet to realize the benefits of precision-guided therapies. This includes those for diabetes mellitus (DM), both type 1 and type 2. Although the scientific and regulatory considerations needed to move to a more "precise" future of DM prevention and treatment differ between the two disease subsets, scientific advances in both must occur before the FDA can incorporate precision medicine into its oversight of DM drug development and approval. This article provides an overview of the regulatory expectations and challenges in realizing a future where the therapeutics for DM are informed by precise knowledge of a patient's genetics and specific phenotype.