Biotech Advances Paving Way For Individualised Medicines

As biotechnology moves from genetic engineering to discovery science, a dramatic shift to individualised medicine in the coming years is being forecast by biotech companies.

Individualised medicine is the ability to deliver therapeutics on an individual basis through molecular phenotyping of disease subtypes and to predict both patients' therapeutic and side effect responses to diseases.

According to Arthur D Levinson, chairman and chief executive officer of the San Francisco-based Genentech Inc, a pioneer in biotechnology, many common diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma may turn out to be syndromes -- a collection of different diseases with a similar appearance. For instance, the clinical diagnosis of breast cancer can be subclassified on the basis of gene expression into at least three different disease states with as much as a five fold difference in life expectancy. Some asthma types appear to be driven by a circulating antibody called IgE, while in other patients the disease appears to be driven by inflammatory cells or neurogenic mechanisms.

 

Expressing his views in Ernst & Young's World Biotechnology Report, Levinson maintains that understanding the molecular biology of an individual's disease by using early diagnostic testing and genetic profiling will allow therapy to be selected with a greater expectation of benefit.

Looking 5-10 years into future, the Genentech chief says they could look forward to new drugs and therapeutic proteins to be derived from the identification and understanding of common genome sequences. But the real impact of the genome sequences will not be felt in the near term (two or three years), but rather over a longer term.

"The human genome sequence published recently is only a rough draft, and it will probably take two more years before the sequences are 'finished'," writes Levinson who believes that the medical breakthroughs will come from understanding the intricate relationships between variability in the sequence among individuals and their susceptibility to disease or response to treatments.

Rational drug design also will continue to make inroads as structure-function relationships and methods of chemistry continue to improve. On the drug delivery front, there is much basic work just now coming to fruition that holds promise. At the same time, Levinson strikes a note of caution towards staking "gatekeeper" claims -- the current tendency for companies or institutions to assume that once they have identified and sequenced a gene, they necessarily own everything that comes from it.