Developing products for personalized medicine: NIH Research Tools Policy applications.

For innovators at academic or industrial institutions to develop personalized medicine products at the accelerated pace required, rapid access to state-of-the-art research tools and reagents are needed. Unreasonable restrictions or delays in the use of such tools may undermine the development of these customized diagnostics and therapeutic products designed to provide significant treatment benefits to patients who frequently do not benefit from traditional therapeutic approaches. In its funding agreements and its own internal research programs, the National Institutes of Health is implementing policies to facilitate the exchanges of these research tools and related resources.