The Genomics/Proteomics Revolution (a subset of GRIN)
I wanted to follow-up my comments at this week's meeting with a story. You will recall my declaring that your generation is in the midst of a biologic revolution that is rapid and profound and that it will cause changes that are going to disrupt our current cultural fabric. Well, the next morning at work, I met with a salesman from the start-up biotech company Pathwork, who told me that his company, about one year old, was establishing a niche in cancer diagnostics in the area of cancers of unknown primary. This refers to the 5-6% of cancers that first appear after they have spread (called a metastasis), so that it may not be clear what organ they started in. For example, your cancer may first present because it has spread to your liver, even though it started in the colon. This matters, because there are new biologically-derived drugs ( called targeted biotech therapies) that are organ specific. These didn't exist 25 years ago. Until this meeting, all I could have told the doctor about which organ your cancer had started in was, "I don't know". Pathwork has the developed the science that allows them to extract the RNA from as little as 300 tumor cells (a very small amount), examine the RNA for the 2000 gene mutations that they have discovered to occur in the 15 adenocarcinomas likely to metastasize, and tell you which organ your tumor started in. You can then receive the right treatment. Now get this, the first research in this area started just 9 years ago, and now it is at the level of small community hospitals.
If the cost of $4000 sounds like a lot, bear in mind that the biologic drugs cost $6-9,000 /month for as long as you live, which may be years. There are currently 600 new biotech medicines in human clinical trials or under review by the FDA for all diseases (not just cancer). The cultural and political manifestations are quite unimaginable. Philip