Personalized medicine promises to tailor treatments to patients’ diseases, so to determine whether a drug is suitable for a given patient, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to companion diagnostic tests — tests that, by definition, are necessary to decide if a course of treatment is right for a particular patient. Many such companion tests are being used first in oncology. “I think if you look at the history of companion diagnostics that have been brought to market, it’s really in the targeted oncology space, and for most of these targeted therapies, it’s very clear they work very well in specific populations,” says Paul Beresford, the vice president of business development and strategic marketing at Biodesix. “Companion diagnostics are the tools to identify those populations.” (Read more at GenomeWeb)