Article in todays Chicago Tribune mentions INCY, CELERA, as well as AFFX:
GENETICS RESHAPING MEDICINE
By Ronald Kotulak
Tribune Staff Writer
February 21, 1999
Science's rapidly growing power to read our genes, the blueprint of life, is having a momentous and unanticipated impact on medicine, a revolution that will give physicians the ability to predict a person's
future health and to head off diseases to which they may be susceptible.
"In the next five to 10 years, everybody who's interested will have the opportunity to undergo some form of DNA testing to predict their future risk," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of National Human Genome Research Institute, which is spearheading the drive to discover all human genes.
Still in its infancy, genetic medicine is already having a major impact on everyday life as doctors test for disease genes such as
BRCA 1 for breast cancer and routinely use genetically engineered drugs such as the blood clot-dissolving TPA to dramaticallyreduce the damage from heart attacks and strokes.
The trend is accelerating as new technology and the promise of big profits propel genetic research and development. "DNA sequencing and usage is coming on with a roar," said geneticist David Valle of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "I can't overemphasize how fast that's coming and how irrevocably that's coming," he said. For some people, genetic testing already is here. Two years after Alice had both breasts removed, one because it had cancer and the other for fear it would develop cancer, the 39-year-old had a genetic test that showed why she, her mother,grandmother and a sister all had breast cancer.
They all had inherited the BRCA 1 gene, a mutated form of an important gene that greatly increases the risk of breast cancer. The gene test supported her agonizing decision to have the healthy breast removed.
The test will have even more significance for Alice's daughter, who has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the BRCA 1 gene and can be tested for it when she reaches 18. "If she does have the gene, then we'll do everything we can to prevent breast cancer, like early screening, eating a low-fat diet, exercising, avoiding excessive alcohol and any other thing that looks like it might help," Alice said. Efforts are also under way to screen some members of future generations. In vitro fertilization, which involves the fertilization of an egg in the laboratory, is enabling scientists to screen the egg for inherited genetic diseases before it is implanted in a woman.
Leading the pack of private companies trolling for genes that can be turned into profitable drugs are Celera, a partnership of Craig Venter and Perkin-Elmer, a major maker of gene sequencing equipment, andIncyte Pharmaceuticals Inc. The two companies plan to spend $500 million on their search. In the face of this competition, leaders of
the Human Genome Project, the $3 billion, 15-year federal government effort to find all of the human genes by 2005, recently announced that they plan to finish the job by 2003, two years ahead of schedule.
Having the complete sequence of all human genes will usher in a new era of medicine, which biologists and doctors are already defining as BS (before sequence) and AS (after sequence), said David Ledbetter, who is setting up a new department of human genetics at the University of Chicago. "The pace of discovery is mind boggling," he said. Not all the early promises of genetic research have been fulfilled. For example, gene therapy, the ability to "lift the hood" of the body's genetic mechanism and fix disease-causing genes, has been largely ineffective in some 300 human trials. Researchers, however, are continuing their search for better ways to deliver healthy genes where they are needed, encouraged by recent success in injecting genes into
heart cells to construct new arteries.
More successful has been the kind of genetic testing that Alice and others have undergone. In the near future, genetic screening will be able to test for 20 to 30 common ailments, including cancer, heart
disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's. "Ideally you would want to put on the list the things where intervention is available," said Collins. "Right now, for Alzheimer's disease we don't have that. But we might
have it in five or 10 years." Biotech companies like Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., are making tiny computerized DNA screening devices that can be used to quickly identify genetic mutations that
earmark a person for cancer or other diseases. One of their chips scans for a p53 mutation, which has been linked to about half of all human cancers. Along with such benefits of genetic research have come some now-familiar social issues. DNA privacy already is the subject of
debate among legislators.
DNA is far more informative and indestructible than Social Security numbers.[paragraphs of editorializing about government protection of people with bad genes]
The most sweeping, near-term benefit of knowing our genes is likely to be a major improvement in health that could supersede the tremendous advances made by vaccines and antibiotics. "Even though we like to think we're fairly sophisticated in medicine, we don't cure disease. We make it more bearable, or we prolong peoples' lives," said Dr. Gary Nabel, a University of Michigan gene therapist. "Genomic medicine is different. It is the fact that you're getting at the root cause of the disease and you have rational new ways of treating it." Although it has been slow to develop, gene therapy is the goal of many researchers. "We can envision a hospital some day that is strictly a gene-therapy hospital," said Dr. Clifford Steer of the University of
Minnesota, who is working on gene repair. "You go in, get your blood drawn, have your DNA sequenced, get some healthy DNA made, have it injected, and you walk out cured of your disease. All in one day,"
he recently told scientists at a meeting on new genetic research at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Major pharmaceutical companies are now using genes to make new drugs, and commercial genetic screening already is being offered for such genes as the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes, which predispose to breast cancer. The drug companies hope genetics will provide an answer to one of their biggest problems, potentially harmful side effects. Knowing which genes a person has will help determine if a specific drug will be helpful or cause adverse reactions.
"Ten years ago you had a collection of pharmaceutical companies that were madly trying to develop better drugs against a very small number of potential targets," said Ken Paigen, director of the Jackson Laboratory. "Now you have a bunch of pharmaceutical companies that have more targets than they know what to do with."
Everyone has similar genes for making fingernails, hair, blood, brain and all of the other cells of the human body. They are packaged in 46 chromosomes, half of which come from the mother and the other half
from the father. While the genes are similar, they may differ in one or more sub-units, usually the result of mutations. Most of these differences are harmless, but some may lead directly to such diseases as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease, or they may act indirectly, increasing a person's susceptibility to developing cancer,
heart disease, diabetes, depression, high blood pressure or some other disorder.
Each person has an estimated six to 12 "vulnerability genes" that place them at risk for one or more of these diseases if they smoke, eat a high-fat diet, endure psychological pressures, don't exercise, or engage in other habits or activities that put stress on their weak genes. For some major killers, cures may be relatively simple once wide-scale genetic testing becomes available. One of these is hemochromatosis, a deadly genetic disease that affects more than a million Americans. The disease, which is seldom diagnosed, doesn't show up until a person reaches his 40s or 50s. A gene defect allows too much iron to build up in the heart, liver and other organs, causing damage that leads to death in 10 to 15 years.
[More editing by me]
Any comments... Chicago Tribune is not the worlds greatest newspaper and I wouldn't doubt there are simplifications and outright mis-info... comments? At least we got some press for INCY!
DAK
|
