"Medicines
matched to an individual's genes?
By 2005? That is just too soon. No one will believe it." The journal
editor was prodding the University of Cincinnati researcher to push the
date to at least 2010. But Stephen Liggett was not budging, insisting
his prediction about personalized medications was valid.
When the national publication came out, however, Liggett's article clearly
read 2010.
Did the editors of Nature Medicine have an explanation? "They said
they forgot," says the chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine
and professor of medicine and pharmacology at the College of Medicine.
"I know that 2005 is only four years from now, but it seems to me
we've underestimated the pace of the progress of the human genome,"
he contends. "At one time, we said it wouldn't be finished for several
more years, and it's already complete."
Liggett's pioneering
attitude is typical of UC's approach to genetic discovery and basic science.
"Genome" is scientific shorthand for the full set of genes an
organism carries in each cell. Early in the search, scientists were able
to identify individual human genes only after long hours of painstaking
laboratory studies of microscopic strands of DNA. As the race heated up,
computerized robotics were used to check thousands of DNA samples per
second, 24 hours a day. By June of 2000, scientists from the publicly
funded U.S. Human Genome Project and a private company, Celera Genomics,
jointly announced that they had successfully mapped and sequenced the
30,000 genes of the human genetic code.
Today, David Millhorn, chairman of molecular and cellular physiology at
the College of Medicine and director of the new University of Cincinnati
Genome Research Institute (UC opens new
genome research institute) says "tons" of genomic data are
now available for study in this "post-genome" era. "The
challenge," he confirms, "is to take this information and apply
it to understanding complex biological problems and disease processes
that are regulated by the simultaneous expression (turning on) of numerous
genes."
Most of us think of genes as those invisible bearers of qualities we inherited
from our parents and grandparents: brown eyes like Grandma's, a freckled
nose like Mom's or athletic ability like Dad's. Genes are the things we
praise or blame when we identify characteristics that "run in the
family," such as twins, longevity or allergies.
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pill does not fit all
