Drugs giants unite for medical revolution
Thursday, April 15, 1999 Published at 14:29 GMT 15:29 UK - Drugs giants
unite for medical revolution
A new human gene map, which could herald a revolution in medicine, is the
aim of a powerful consortium of drug companies, medical charities and
research laboratories.
The SNP Consortium is a £28m, two-year effort to track down the tiny
changes in genes which make one person different to another. These are
called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs.
Pinpointing these changes will lead to an understanding of why some people
are predisposed to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, depression and
arthritis, whilst others are not. They will also allow new drugs to be more
effective and tailored to an individual's genetic make-up.
"The potential benefits for this in human health are dramatic and
revolutionary," says Dr Michael Morgan, chief executive of the Wellcome
Trust's Genome Campus.
Technological advances are expected to produce a DNA chip, which can
quickly analyse an individual's genetic code. This, with a successful SNP
project, would mean a doctor's surgery test could give early warning of
disease risk and allow drugs to be tailored to individuals.
The consortium members include ten of the biggest global drugs companies
but the information will not be patented and will be available, free of
charge to all researchers.
"For any one company to do it by themselves would be extremely expensive,"
Dr Morgan told BBC News Online. "They realised it would be much less
expensive to do it together. Then we, and others, managed to persuade them
there was a lot of merit in making this information widely available.
"It's similar to the concept of open source software - as people use the
map they gain information that adds to that map, to the benefit of everyone.
"The SNP database will be an important tool which each company will then
use for its own research. That may well lead to a patentable discovery such
as a new drug," he said.
Humans have around 100,000 genes and 99.9% of those are the same in
everybody. Only 0.1% of the genes account for differences between people.
The key to the new medical approaches is in the single DNA base variations,
SNPs, that are estimated to occur every 1,000 bases.
The SNP Consortium intends to identify up to 300,000 SNPs and map at least
150,000. The DNA used will come from a diverse group of anonymous
volunteers. DNA sequences information will come from the publicly-funded
Human Genome Project.
The resulting database will be managed by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The rapidly increasing knowledge about the human genome has caused concern
that, for example, insurance companies might refuse to cover those with
genetic risks or that human embryos might be manipulated to remove
undesirable characteristics.
"It's quite clear that the more information one has in any area, the more
one can do with it, and there's always the possibility of doing harm as
well as good," says Dr Morgan.
"But everything that I know about how human society works means that if
information is restricted to a few, they can use it however they like. If
it is made available to everyone and used in a transparent way, there's
much more likelihood of it being used for everybody's good."
Another concern is that small biotechnology companies might suffer as a
result of a large consortium making all their information freely available.
This is unfounded, according to Sir Brian Richards, chairman of a number of
biotechnology companies.
He told BBC News Online: "Even a large consortium would take a very long
time to produce all the SNP data that is of value. I think that if there
are opportunities to be found, the small biothech companies will find them
- they've shown they can on many, many occasions."
The SNP Consortium members include:
* Pharmaceutical companies: AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Company, F.Hoffmann-La Roche, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoechst Marion Roussel,
Novartis, Pfizer, Searle, and SmithKline Beecham.
* Medical Charity: The Wellcome Trust.
* Academic Laboratories: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Sanger Centre,
Stanford Human Genome Center Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research,
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
BBC News Online: Sci/Tech
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_319000/319872.stm
janet paterson - 52 now /41 dx /37 onset - [log in to unmask]
613/256/8340 - po box 171/almonte/ontario/k0a 1a0/canada
Scan some of My Past Posts at:
http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm
Mine the PD List Archives at:
http://james.parkinsons.org.uk/
Cull Nine Million Pub-Med Medical Studies at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
Comb the 'People With Parkinson's' Web-Ring at:
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=parkie;list
