OmicsIze
ThisVille
Don't worry.
I am not going to weigh in on the situation in Venezuela here, mostly because I haven't done the reading yet to figure out the true intentions of the various agendas at play, which is my bad.
Instead, I want to give anyone interested a bit of an entree into a topic that, while it is somewhat peripheral to what I do in my day job, is something I pay considerable attention to, regardless.
And that is this business of whether the 'omics' revolution in the life sciences (think gene sequencing, and more) is going to lead to personalized medical breakthroughs/treatments for all, based on each of our individual profiles.
Derek Lowe, a drug discovery guy who writes an excellent Science Blog, has weighed in on the topic in the wake of a number of recent thought provoking harder science-type articles.
Here is just one s thought provoking kicker among many in his latest post:
...We’ve long known about the genetic contributions to many rare diseases. One of the hopes for the new era was that we’d be able to discover some genetic variants or combinations with relevance to many of the more widespread ones (diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc.) But that’s not the case. What you find is a cloud of dozens or hundreds of genes that put together explain only some fraction of the disease landscape. And it’s not like the rest is lurking in the genome somewhere – we’re studying the whole genome already, so that excuse, which was very popular at one time, is no longer operative. Nope, the rest of it is in all the things that aren’t in the gene sequences: epigenetic markers, to be sure, but more generally the uncounted effects of environment and development. Now, it’s true that you can do a pretty good prediction of height from gene sequence these days, with a model that blends in a whole heap of gene variants, each of which contribute a bit up or down. But that’s only if you stipulate good nutrition, in that case, since that can override things pretty thoroughly. And for so many other traits, we don’t quite know what nongenetic influences to control for, or how much genetic influence is left once you’ve done that...
So.
What to do?
Do we double-down and generate even more data and crunch it even harder?
That is the argument of many in the field, with the expectation that it will lead to better prediction algorithms, protocols and 'signatures', from which actionable (i.e. drug) targets will emerge.
Or.
Do we need to come up with a new approach?
I apologize got getting equivocal here, but this is something we need to think hard about, I think.
OK?
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On a completely different tack, I strongly suggest you have a look at hyper-local Lotuslandian guy, Stanley Q. Woodvine's latest post....It's about a bit of life affirming and thought-provoking grafitti that Stanley has curated where the artist's embedded twist will blow you away...Read it - it's good.
Post title given you a bit of an ear worm that needs scratching? Try....This.
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Friday, February 01, 2019
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7 comments:
Hey Ross,
Thanks so much for your thought provoking (unencrypted) read this morning.
On the Different Tack, I dug a little deeper in to Stanley Q. Woodvine's blog. Thanks for the heads up on this one - it always pays to read your fine print.
As for Venezuela, try this...http://tinyurl.com/y7fug4m3
Cheers,
M
At the risk of sounding like a techno-utopian, I am impressed, fascinated, and frightened by the developments in AI. It is hard for me to not believe that doubling down on the data is exactly the right thing to do. The pace of machine learning is such that it is surely worth applying to more and more health data. My two cents.
I like the comment to the article by Shankaran Kothandaraman, notwithstanding the fact we are studying billions, not millions of years of ongoing evolution of the very combinations that have given us the capacity to study them. Two decades should not lead to impatience.
Crunch on.
They'll find a cure for it all once its profitable enough.
There are so many factors contributing to diseases, who gets them, who dies from them. Sometimes I think it would be cool if they could check into the genetics of some of our ancestors. They didn't live as long as we did so we don't know and we don't have family medical histories, in most families much beyond grandparents.
However, we spend so much money on diseases which kill a lot of people, but in the grand scheme of things, not that many and those they kill are usually citizens of G=20 countries. The rest of the world goes without medical care or proper nutrition to make it through life.
I acknowledge if its your loved one, of course no amount of money is too much, but for all the money spent on figuring out heart transplants over the years, from the first heart transplant in South Africa, by Dr., omg, forgot his name, those who benefit are pretty much all white and come from well to do countries and are doing o.k. (before you get your nickers in a knot, to qualify as the top 1% of income in the world, all you have to make is about $21k per year). We have spent billions on science for health care but still people die by the hundreds of thousands each year from dirty water or shortened lives because of it and that includes in our country.
Yes, it will be great if we can figure it all out and yes all those algo, thingies working will find something, but .........
Now I'll go read the rest of the articles.
An amazingly strong clear brilliant young voice, in 1988. thanks for the link. we're still waiting for the revolution. did follow it up with listening to Tracy chapman and Eric Clapton, 1999, Give me one reason.
the writing and art are brilliant!
Thanks MB--
And thanks for the link.
Max Fisher and Amanda Taub have also written a couple of context-laden pieces for the NYT recently.
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Glen--
From a pure science/biomedical research POV, I completely agree, but....If you put a research funding and health policy lens on things the resource issue becomes a worry because the research, and even moreso, the health system implementation costs big money now and will likely cost an order of magnitude more in the future... That's the bit that worries me.
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Lew--
Point taken. Interestingly, I went to a seminar on Friday afternoon (the day after I wrote this post) that was given by a sharp young kid who is purposely studying a disease indication where the gene variants are limited (as opposed, for example, to complex neurological disorders) - the group she's working with looks to be close to identifying specific actionable (i.e. where biologics already exist) targets...It was truly impressive.
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e.a.f.--
It's not just 'pure' profit, but also a cost-benefit thing...Compared to clinical trials, the front-end discovery-based research (which is where I work) is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost...So, from a policy point of view which trials do we decide to fund (if we try to leap over the staight-up, for profit pharma-funded trials)?
And, ya, Ms. Chapman the musician/poet still blows me away.
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