NEJM — Detection of Mutations in EGFR in Circulating Lung-Cancer Cells (Sub Req)
Look to history for a sense of the import of today’s medical advances.
Most authorities recognize TR Ashworth, writing in the Australian Medical Jorunal, as making the first discovery of cells in the blood similar to those in patients’ solid tumors (post-mortem). That was in 1869. [...]
In Milestone, FDA Pushes Genetic Tests Tied to Drug - WSJ.com
Kudos to Anna Wilde Matthews, from the Wall Street Journal (Subscr. Req.), who has done a superb job documenting some of the practical difficulties of implementing genetic predictors of therapeutic response in clinical practice. Here’s a snippet from her piece:
Some specialists say testing hasn’t been [...]
This interview with a Wyeth scientist is interesting to me mostly because I’m a believer that the future of cancer diagnostics, including theranostics, lies primarily in peripheral bood sample analysis. It’s sounds like such an obvious point, doesn’t it? After all, most routine diagnostics today are done using a peripheral blood sample, so why shouldn’t [...]
The linked NYT article briefly discusses one of the more salient economic points faced by sponsors and academics interested in developing predictive tests of drug efficacy with established drug classes. It’s also a point that I’ve seen very little attention paid to in the lay media. I’m taking about the issue of class effects. Predictors [...]
I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about our microbiome (the collection of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies) of late. I’m thinking that we (as an industry) have grossly underappreciated its importance to intra- and inter-individual variability in disease phenotype and response to therapies, especially oral drug therapies. Pharmaceutical scientists whose work involves studying [...]
