Update

The human medicine project has started: place your bets now

What now?

Efficient drug discovery and development are two relevant, practical biological uses of genomic information receiving fanfare from the HGP. How does the completion of the human genome, with each gene identified (whether 35 000 or 100 000) lead to treatments and cures for diseases? At the start of the race to sequence the human genome, only a few genes were known and characterized. Now, in this scenario, all the gene sequences are known. Which set of interactive gene products will lead to the

The possibilities

The genome-sequencing world was changed by a simple innovation coupled with focused technological and computer progress. By analogy, imagine a pharmaceutical world in which:

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  The rational selection of disease-specific, genetically associated targets for screening is enabled;

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  The preclinical development pipeline is filled with a greater proportion of molecules that will not fail toxicology screens;

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  A modernized, regulated clinical development system in place that enables patients who respond

Where could we be?

Here is how the future could look. Insight into a rapid method of target selection that is disease-specific enables the industry to fill and order its earliest pipeline with prioritized targets that are known to be genetically associated or linked with specific diseases. The alternative and currently common ‘validation’ approach (jumping on a biological hypothesis and spending years and cash to validate molecules identified by the screen work to treat disease) can sometimes work – but is