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AstraZeneca digs into precision medicine with lung, heart deals

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – AstraZeneca is diving deeper into personalized healthcare with two projects that move the concept beyond cancer into respiratory disorders and heart disease. Personalized or precision medicine, which tailors treatment to a patient's genetic profile, is an increasing focus for drug companies, especially after an initiative from U.S. President Barack Obama in January. “Up to now the science of personalized healthcare has been slower to reach those common disease areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease.” To redress the balance, AstraZeneca said on Wednesday it had signed two deals, one with Abbott Laboratories for a diagnostic test to accompany an experimental asthma drug and another with Canadian scientists on genes associated with heart disease.

AstraZeneca strengthens cancer business with new deals

LONDON (Reuters) – AstraZeneca moved to strengthen its core oncology business on Tuesday with three deals designed to expand the British drugmaker's reach in treating tumors. The collaborations include an agreement to buy Definiens, a private company that has developed a way of unlocking information from cancer tissue samples, for an initial $150 million, and two alliances to test novel drug combinations. Definiens, whose imaging and data analysis technology was developed by Gerd Binnig, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in physics, will be folded into AstraZeneca's biotech arm MedImmune. …