Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Goldstein: Personalized Medicine in 2020

-from Nature
Personalized medicine
David B. Goldstein
Duke University
Over the past decade, powerful genotyping tools have allowed geneticists to look at common variation across the entire human genome to identify the risk factors behind many diseases. Two striking findings will define the study of disease for the decade to come. First, common genetic variation seems to have only a limited role in determining people's predisposition to many common diseases. Second, gene variants that are very rare in the general population can have outsized effects on predisposition.
For example, rare mutations that cause the elimination of chunks of the genome can raise the risk of diseases such as schizophrenia, epilepsy or autism by up to twentyfold. Some researchers view these major risk factors as aberrations. My guess is that as more genomes are sequenced, many other high-impact risk factors will be identified.
If so, here's one confident but uncomfortable prediction of what personalized genomics could look like in 2020. The identification of major risk factors for disease is bound to substantially increase interest in embryonic and other screening programmes. Society has largely already accepted this principle for mutations that lead inevitably to serious health conditions. Will it be so accommodating of those who want to screen out embryos that carry, say, a twentyfold increased risk of a serious but unspecified neuropsychiatric disease?
Some advances will be relatively uncontroversial, such as the development of tailored therapeutic drugs based on genetic differences that are otherwise innocuous. Others will be transformational, such as the identification of definitive genetic risk factors that provide new drug targets for conditions that are often poorly treated such as schizophrenia, epilepsy and cancers. Over the next decade millions of people could have their genomes sequenced. Many will be given an indication of the risks they face. Serious consideration about how to handle the practical and ethical implications of such predictive power should begin now.

3 comments:

Dinah said...

sometimes I wish I could do that 'thumbs up' like thing that facebook lets you do for posts

Sunny CA said...

Will future embryonic screening programs really be so different? Already, at-risk mothers screen their unborn for genetic abnormalities such as Downes Syndrome. If a couple opts to abort a Downes syndrome fetus there are already "ethical implications of such predictive power". We already crossed the Rubicon. Would it really be so bad, considering that a given couple may only have 1 or 2 children in their lifetime, to try to give birth to a child free from Downes Syndrome and schizophrenia and epilepsy and autism? Is it unethical to choose that one's only child will not suffer from these conditions? If I were planning a pregnancy and I had the ability to screen the fetus for multiple major serious health conditions, I would do it.

yatesspain.blogspot.com said...

Very helpful piece of writing, much thanks for this article.