NOVEMBER 20248David Blivin, President & CEO, Cottonwood Technology FundByIn My OpinionVenture capital is more important now than ever in identifying and supporting disruptive innovation that can impact industries and people's lives. Almost every large company has discontinued and significantly scaled back its internal commitment to innovation. Most have now created venture groups to source and support innovation externally but generally will not lead investment rounds, so traditional venture capital firms are now the tip of the spear in finding and leading investments in companies with the promise to disrupt industries.One of the areas with the promise to dramatically impact people's lives is precision medicine. Precision medicine is an approach to healthcare and medical treatment that takes into account a patient's individual variability in genetics, lifestyle, and environment to guide treatment. Genetics holds the promise for much earlier detection, and then once detected it allows for treatment to be tailored to each individual rather than applying a `one-size-fits-all' method. This, of course, results in producing better healthcare outcomes, and as such is often described as prescribing `the right drug to the right patient in the right dose at the right time.' Precision medicine has provided breakthroughs in disease areas such as oncology, cardiology, immunology, and genetic disorders. In oncology, precision medicine has led to several successful blockbuster targeted therapies that recognize variants specific to a patient's cancer cells, improving patient outcomes and enhancing cancer survival rates. Genetic biomarkers are central to enabling these capabilities and can be heavily utilized in the diagnosis, monitoring, and management of cardiovascular disease, immunology, and infectious disease. Notwithstanding the above, not all areas of potential impact have yet been fully uncovered. One area yet to be impacted is psychiatric disease and mental health disorders. A new area of discovery in circular RNAs (circRNA). They uniquely transverse the blood-brain barrier and remain in the blood long enough to be captured and tested via blood samples. For example, the biotech company Circular Genomics (a Cottonwood portfolio company) is exploring the use of circular RNAs (circRNAs) as a potential biomarker for precision medicine in psychiatric and neurological diseases. They are found in abundance in the brain and blood and have been shown to play a major role in brain functions such as synaptic plasticity and neuronal connectivity. Due to their structure circRNAs are much more stable than other linear forms of RNA, and therefore offer significant potential in diagnostic UNVEILING PRECISION MEDICINE: TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE WITH TAILORED TREATMENTSDavid Blivin
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