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 安氏大俗商业学：BIO-TECH（生物科技）时代的到来与风险投资 -- “毛ZD思想兴奋剂”的项目我们投不投？ |
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不会吧？她是对所有人奉献。不是对我一个人。嘻嘻。 -- 安普若 - (0 Byte) 2004-6-06 周日, 14:18 (507 reads) |
九浅
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头衔: 海归上校
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加入时间: 2004/04/02
文章: 844
来自: 中国
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作者：九浅 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Progress made in personalized drug therapies
By Paul Jacobs
Mercury News
Wed, May. 12, 2004
Doctors know that not all drugs work equally well in all patients with the same diagnosis, whether it's cancer, arthritis or hay fever. But usually doctors and patients find this out the hard way -- when either a drug works or it doesn't.
You can call it trial-and-error medicine: only when a drug or treatment fails do doctors decide to try something else.
In practical terms that means a lot of medications are prescribed, sometimes for months at a time, without having much effect.
And that adds up to a lot of drug sales for biotechnology and drug companies for treating patients who probably won't benefit.
All that is slowly beginning to change. Researchers are moving us into an era of what's been dubbed ``personalized medicine'' -- using knowledge of the individual patient and the disease to determine ahead of time what's most likely to do the job.
In the past few weeks, there have been several studies in topflight journals that suggest how this might work.
But the notion isn't completely new.
Cancer medication
Since 1998, Genentech has been selling a drug for treating breast cancer called Herceptin, which is recommended only for patients whose tumor cells are covered with a superabundance of a protein called Her-2. There are tests available to show which patients qualify. Only about one-quarter of breast-cancer patients do. The majority of patients don't.
The latest research looks at one of the newest of the anti-cancer drugs, Iressa from AstraZeneca, which is being marketed for advanced-lung-cancer patients.
It's the first of a new class of medications that seem to work by blocking a tumor-cell protein called epidermal growth factor receptor or EGFR.
It doesn't do much for most patients. But in about 10 percent of lung-cancer patients, Iressa produces what one group of researchers called ``a rapid and often dramatic clinical response.'' It's not surprising that a lot of doctors are giving the pill a try with their most desperate lung-cancer patients.
But now two groups of Harvard University researchers, who published their findings separately in Science and the New England Journal of Medicine, have discovered mutations in the genetic instructions for the key EGFR protein in tumors from patients who are most likely to respond to the drug.
Suddenly, it seems possible to know ahead of time, from a straightforward genetic test, whether Iressa is likely to work or not in a particular patient. That's especially important, because as many as 2 percent of patients develop a distressing and potentially lethal lung disease while taking Iressa. That's a good reason to give it only to patients it's likely to help.
These are not the sort of studies that companies are likely to fund themselves. After all, the results may well limit a drug's potential market. In fact, the latest Iressa studies were backed by the National Institutes of Health along with several private charities and foundations.
Stock-market reaction
The stock market generally took the studies in stride. Shares of AstraZeneca and the other companies with drugs in the same class, including ImClone Systems, Abgenix, Genentech and OSI Pharmaceuticals, were largely unaffected by the news. That's probably because routine testing for these particular genetic mutations is still several years away.
But it's important work and there's going to be more and more research like it.
About the same time as the release of the Iressa results, scientists from Stanford University, the University of Miami and Applied Biosystems in Foster City published a study showing that the activity of just six different genes in tumor cells seems to be useful in predicting the survival of patients with a particular form of lymphoma. The authors conclude that their genetic test may prove useful in telling doctors which patients will do well with conventional therapy and which are good candidates for something new.
Research measuring gene activity or looking for genetic mutations in diseases like cancer is becoming commonplace. And it now seems likely that it will play a large role in making crucial treatment decisions, whatever the effect on pharmaceutical and biotech company sales and profits.
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Contact Paul Jacobs at [email protected] or (530) 756-0236.
作者：九浅 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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