Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Over the summer, on Bloomberg, opinion piece pointed out that
Speaker 1: new research shows Americans need greater access to genetic testing
Speaker 1: and stronger legal protections against genetic discrimination. According to a
Speaker 1: recent study that was published in the American Journal of
Speaker 1: Human Genetics Now, the study of DNA samples from the
Speaker 1: Penn Medicine Biobank found that a quarter of adults under
Speaker 1: the age of forty who had been admitted to the
Speaker 1: Penn Medicine ICU carried a mutation that would have been
Speaker 1: relevant to their treatment. So it's just talking about the
Speaker 1: importance of understanding your genetics and what it could mean for.
Speaker 2: Health, and that genetic testing what becomes available changes so frequently,
Speaker 2: I mean year to year, they can identify more and more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And our next guest has a vast body
Speaker 1: of work when it comes to the field of genetics.
Speaker 1: Let's get to our weekly BusinessWeek Women's Health segment, where
Speaker 1: we focus on key issues and developing technologies impacting the
Speaker 1: present and future of women's health around the world and
Speaker 1: really in many ways, everybody's health around the world. Joining
Speaker 1: us right now is doctor Wendy Chung, Chief of Pediatrics
Speaker 1: at Boston Children's Hospital. She is the Mary Ellen Avery
Speaker 1: Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and she joins
Speaker 1: us from London, where it's a little bit later. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much, doctor Chung for joining us. You
Speaker 1: have spent more than two decades as a clinical and
Speaker 1: molecular geneticist and have directed many NIH funded research programs.
Speaker 1: Got to ask, are we at a good time for
Speaker 1: healthcare advantage advancements excuse me? Or are we possibly going backwards?
Speaker 3: We have amazing opportunities, amazing opportunities specifically around genetics, both
Speaker 3: in terms of diagnostics, predicting and being able to tailor
Speaker 3: health and health prevention and health treatment based on that,
Speaker 3: in new things in terms of therapeutics, especially in the
Speaker 3: rare disease space. So it couldn't be a more exciting
Speaker 3: time in terms of the ability to scale this, to
Speaker 3: use data, to do it more accurately, and to get
Speaker 3: it to more people where they're at.
Speaker 2: It sounds exciting and the opportunities sound exciting, But we're
Speaker 2: at a point with the United States, where we don't
Speaker 2: have great outcomes compared to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: We lag when it comes to other countries and their
Speaker 2: health outcomes. Why is that? From your view?
Speaker 3: In many cases it's due to access. And as we
Speaker 3: think about this, we're trying to think of ways that
Speaker 3: we can provide care anywhere. So are there ways to
Speaker 3: think about how do we get access to patients where
Speaker 3: they are in ways that can fit in with their
Speaker 3: lives and get them really news they can use is
Speaker 3: the way I think about it, when they can use
Speaker 3: it just in time to be able to do it,
Speaker 3: ingest it, understand it, and apply it in ways that
Speaker 3: really fit in with their life. We have amazing opportunities,
Speaker 3: but we don't do them equitably for everyone.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, doctor Chung Tim and I spend so
Speaker 1: much time talking about the case shaped economy, right, and
Speaker 1: that on an economic level, not everybody benefits from the
Speaker 1: US economy, even in good time. So that obviously carries
Speaker 1: over to healthcare. If you could change one thing, what
Speaker 1: would it be that would make healthcare more equitable?
Speaker 3: So if you can imagine this future state, I've been
Speaker 3: running a study in New York City called Guardian genomic
Speaker 3: uniform screaming against rare diseases and all newborns for a
Speaker 3: baby when they get their heel prick right after bruth
Speaker 3: to be able to screen for disorders that are treatable
Speaker 3: and curable, things like penal keaton area. Now, can we
Speaker 3: think about blowing that up in a good way by
Speaker 3: being able to do genome sequencing to identify all the
Speaker 3: treatable conditions so that everyone gets access to this and
Speaker 3: for those same children, if they get sick and have
Speaker 3: symptoms at some point in the future, reinterrogate that genomic
Speaker 3: information to make the diagnosis essentially instantaneously. So if they're
Speaker 3: having breathing problems, growing problems, problems with developments, not hitting
Speaker 3: their milestones, can you get the diagnosis very very quickly
Speaker 3: to start the journey and make sure that diagnostic odyssey
Speaker 3: doesn't go on for very long to start the treatment.
Speaker 1: All right, logical question or follow up? Why don't we
Speaker 1: do that? Is it just too expensive or what?
Speaker 2: You know? It's funny.
Speaker 1: I was talking to an individual who's from South Korea
Speaker 1: or has family back in South Korea and says, you know,
Speaker 1: every year you can go and you can get a
Speaker 1: body scan head to toe, not crazy expensive like it
Speaker 1: would be here in the United States, and you can
Speaker 1: get potentially early signs of something that's that's not good.
Speaker 1: So I'm just wondering when it comes to why don't
Speaker 1: we do these genetic testing? Is it not available? Is
Speaker 1: it too expensive?
Speaker 3: So it is being done on a research baso's on
Speaker 3: a very small number of newborns right now, but all
Speaker 3: throw down the gauntlet. I think we can drive down
Speaker 3: the price of doing being able to do this, and
Speaker 3: right now, let's just say it costs thousand dollars per
Speaker 3: baby to be able to do this. That's probably not
Speaker 3: something that we can scale at three point six million
Speaker 3: babies born each year, but if we can drive down
Speaker 3: the cost by fifty percent seventy five percent, I do
Speaker 3: think if you look at the health economics in terms
Speaker 3: of the return on investment, it easily pays for itself
Speaker 3: over it to in your period.
Speaker 2: What about when it comes to using that data for
Speaker 2: technologies such as gene editing. And we spoke to Jennifer DOWDNA,
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty Nobel Laureate a few months ago at
Speaker 2: our Bloomberg Technology conference back in San Francisco. She was
Speaker 2: very optimistic that we will see this happening more and
Speaker 2: more in humans. Will this become just the standard of
Speaker 2: care in your view for kids who have genetic disorders.
Speaker 3: So I do think for these single gene conditions, platform
Speaker 3: technologies such as what doctor DOWDNA and others have developed,
Speaker 3: they're not quite ready for prime time to just dial
Speaker 3: in any particular genetic edit and fix it. But we
Speaker 3: are getting towards those platforms to be able to do this,
Speaker 3: and I do think that over the next decade we're
Speaker 3: going to make tremendous strides. And I do think from
Speaker 3: a regulatory point of view, the FDA and other regulatory
Speaker 3: agencies understand that within rear diseases, you need to think
Speaker 3: about platforms and being able to use information for one
Speaker 3: rare disease in terms of treatments for others, and to
Speaker 3: understand the safety profile and use that across conditions. And
Speaker 3: so for the seven thousand rare diseases, I don't think
Speaker 3: we have to solve the problems seven thousand times. I
Speaker 3: think it's going to come to a much simpler number
Speaker 3: of solutions.
Speaker 1: Hey, one thing we wanted to ask you about recent
Speaker 1: article in Nature. You were quoted that MAHA's spotlight on
Speaker 1: children's health is welcome and that this could be the
Speaker 1: decade of the Kids, and that would be an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: How So, especially when we see an administration a Secretary
Speaker 1: of HHS pushing back on things like vaccines and other
Speaker 1: policies that research has showed has definitely improved health in
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 3: So I think if you think about the technology that
Speaker 3: I talked about with newborn screening, it can be applied
Speaker 3: to any number of things for children. So that again,
Speaker 3: if you know where the pain points are, if you
Speaker 3: know what the susceptibilities, you can think about everything from
Speaker 3: how a child can learn better, if they're going to
Speaker 3: have certain challenges in terms of understanding learning behavior, how
Speaker 3: to be able to tailor things to them, if they're
Speaker 3: going to have problems in terms of a tendency towards
Speaker 3: type one diabetes, asthma, even cancer in the future, how
Speaker 3: do you tailor their surveillance the particular things we monitor,
Speaker 3: how frequently we monitor, So it's not a one size
Speaker 3: fits all for everyone. You really get more out of
Speaker 3: the energy and the money you're putting into it because
Speaker 3: it's tailored for the person. And I do think both
Speaker 3: in terms of being able to have biomarkers looking at
Speaker 3: disease progression and genomics to guide you, we can do
Speaker 3: much better because we have enough data now to be
Speaker 3: able to understand those patterns and profiles.
Speaker 1: We've run out of time, but hopefully come back real
Speaker 1: soon because I know emerging technologies, whether it's artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: or quantum computing, which all of a sudden this week
Speaker 1: we're talking a lot about, are going to be very
Speaker 1: important metrics when it comes to disease predictability. So please
Speaker 1: please come back really soon. Doctor Wendy Chung, chief of
Speaker 1: pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital. She is the Mary Ellen
Speaker 1: Avery Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and she's
Speaker 1: joining us from London