Great piece in Technology Review about how bioinformatics wil lead to tailored combos of drugs to treat diseases according to who were are and what we need...
"A biotech company called CombinatoRx has found that at the right doses, thousands of counterintuitive drug pairs are synergistic. The Cambridge, MA, company has eight drug combinations in clinical trials and several more in preclinical development. In a few years, diabetics, instead of injecting insulin, might be prescribed a cholesterol drug and a pain medication to help control their blood sugar. People suffering from chronic pain might find relief through a combination of a steroid and an antidepressant, with fewer side effects than they experience with current therapies.
Alexis Borisy, founder and CEO of the company, says his researchers take a brute-force approach to finding fruitful drug combinations. In the lab, they test combinations of several thousand drugs at several different doses on cellular models of diseases including cancer and arthritis--regardless of what diseases the drugs are currently approved for, if any. Then they feed the data into software that looks for synergies."
The entire article and link thereof can be found here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18280/
Just one problem....for every combo you will need.....a Risk management plan under the enlightened regime of Kennedy Enzi. Otherwise you and your doctor will be subject to some sort of liabiity and likely be denied reimbursement by an equally enlightened insurance or health plan.
Meanwhile Big Pharma lobbyists work with the staffers in Enzi and Kennedy's office for minor changes in the bill. Don't they realize that in a matter of days the Waxmaniac is going to drop his mutated version of Kenzi, complete with a comparative effectiveness study requirement?
What's counterintuitive is that people are still failing to ask just how Kenzi will affect access to lifesaving medicines and cripple the doctor patient relationship...
"A biotech company called CombinatoRx has found that at the right doses, thousands of counterintuitive drug pairs are synergistic. The Cambridge, MA, company has eight drug combinations in clinical trials and several more in preclinical development. In a few years, diabetics, instead of injecting insulin, might be prescribed a cholesterol drug and a pain medication to help control their blood sugar. People suffering from chronic pain might find relief through a combination of a steroid and an antidepressant, with fewer side effects than they experience with current therapies.
Alexis Borisy, founder and CEO of the company, says his researchers take a brute-force approach to finding fruitful drug combinations. In the lab, they test combinations of several thousand drugs at several different doses on cellular models of diseases including cancer and arthritis--regardless of what diseases the drugs are currently approved for, if any. Then they feed the data into software that looks for synergies."
The entire article and link thereof can be found here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18280/
Just one problem....for every combo you will need.....a Risk management plan under the enlightened regime of Kennedy Enzi. Otherwise you and your doctor will be subject to some sort of liabiity and likely be denied reimbursement by an equally enlightened insurance or health plan.
Meanwhile Big Pharma lobbyists work with the staffers in Enzi and Kennedy's office for minor changes in the bill. Don't they realize that in a matter of days the Waxmaniac is going to drop his mutated version of Kenzi, complete with a comparative effectiveness study requirement?
What's counterintuitive is that people are still failing to ask just how Kenzi will affect access to lifesaving medicines and cripple the doctor patient relationship...
