How Close are We to Precision Medicine for ME/CFS & Long COVID? ft. Chris Armstrong
August 26, 2026
ME/CFS and Long COVID are complex, multi-system conditions that have been difficult to diagnose, study and treat through traditional approaches. Yet standard trials keep failing because they treat heterogeneous patient cohorts as a single disease.
In this episode of Biology Matters, PrecisionLife CEO Steve Gardner joins Chris Armstrong, Director of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration and Scientific Advisor to the Open Medicine Foundation. Together, they explore how mechanistic patient stratification can break the deadlock in developing successful treatments for chronic complex diseases like long COVID and ME/CFS.
Complex chronic conditions like ME/CFS and Long COVID routinely stall in clinical development. Traditional trial designs rely on broad diagnostic criteria, grouping biologically distinct patients together and drowning real drug efficacy signals in noise.
In this episode of Biology Matters, Steve Gardner speaks with Chris Armstrong, Director of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration and Scientific Advisor to the Open Medicine Foundation, about how the science around it is evolving, from metabolomics and patient stratification and how precision medicine could help move the field forward.
What You'll Learn:
- How Chris Armstrong first entered ME/CFS research through metabolomics
- Why metabolomics can help identify biological patterns and potential disease markers
- What the nitrogen hypothesis suggests about amino acid metabolism in ME/CFS
- Why ME/CFS and Long COVID are unlikely to be solved by one single treatment
- How patient stratification could improve clinical trial design
- Why drug repurposing may offer a faster route to potential treatments
- Why dosing and tolerability matter in frail or sensitive patient populations
- How better biological markers could help pharma, researchers and clinicians move forward
- Why the next five years could bring more useful tools and treatment insights for patients
About Steve
Steve Gardner is CEO and Co-Founder of PrecisionLife, recognised for his expertise in mechanism-based biology and its application to chronic disease management. With over 25 years of experience in life sciences and informatics, he has contributed to the Human Genome Project, led over 30 drug discovery and development initiatives, and built multiple healthcare and AI technologies from concept to market. His work bridges computational biology with clinical translation, positioning him at the forefront of precision medicine for complex chronic conditions, a space historically underserved by traditional approaches that have often focused more heavily on oncology.
At PrecisionLife, Steve focuses on using better biological understanding to support earlier diagnosis, patient stratification and more targeted treatment development.
About Chris
Chris Armstrong is Director of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration and Scientific Advisor to the Open Medicine Foundation. Based at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute at the University of Melbourne, Chris has spent more than 15 years studying ME/CFS, with a particular focus on metabolomics, metabolic profiling and the biological mechanisms that may help explain the condition’s complex symptom patterns.
His research explores how metabolism, amino acid usage, nitrogen handling, heterogeneity and patient subgroups may shape ME/CFS and related conditions such as Long COVID. Chris’s work reflects a broader shift in the field: away from searching for one single explanation and toward understanding the different biological pathways that may be driving disease in different patients.
Episode Resources:
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