NOVEMBER 2001 BROADSHEET - Medical Advances and the Genome Project
Despite complete chaos caused by a total makeover at the Welding Institute, a large crowd of members and visitors found their way through the trees to the grand Old Hall of Abington Park on 25 October and enjoyed two stimulating talks and a lively discussion on Medical Advances and the Genome Project. We met in the charming Oak Room, which was only just big enough for us, and listened to Dr Karen Jones from Incyte Genomics and Dr Gareth Roberts from Proteom Ltd under the chairmanship of Dr Simon Goodman.
Karen introduced many of us to a new world of gene technology in which the vast mine of data coming from the various genome studies, not only on humans, are leading the way to greatly reduced failure rates in the search for medical cures. At present the average cost to the launch of a new drug is $880M, so there is plenty of scope for dramatic savings both in lead times and money. She outlined several examples - asthmatic lung, osteoarthritis and osteoporosis - and pointed further into the future when personalised medicine could become available through web surfing.
Gareth told us how Proteom Ltd had now accumulated a critical mass of data allowing a smart approach to the intelligent selection of receptor design. This In-silico analysis using the simple DNA rules, A-T and G-C, led to a useful 100 correlations out of a possible 10,000. Some of these correlations turned out to be wildly unexpected, similar to the Tesco finding that nappies needed to be placed next to beer packs because fathers were invariably sent out to do the bulk buying! Proteom's aim and expectation was to get the lead time for a drug launch down from 10 to 5 years.
Many questions flowed including new boundaries in patent law, charging for access to the data bases and royalties for the use of the information discovered. Also covered were links to academia, ethical reviews and the way in which small companies are forging ahead in antibody research.
Contact info: karen.jones@incyte.com and gwroberts@proteom.com.
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