Smarter Drugs

Historians often regard the latter part of the 19th century as a time of great "flowering" in the evolution of medicine.kid Inflatable Santa Claus New insights in to how germs affect the human body, as well as advancements in microscopy, led scientists to discover the root causes for a multitude of infectious diseases.
Now medicine is on the threshold of a second renaissance, and the discoveries of this period may lead to a revolution in the treatment of everything from heart disease to cancer. The field is known as pharmaco-genetics and the mission is to design drugs that are targeted to a patient's genetic profile. Though still in its infancy, the field has made critical steps in the battle against some cancers, and show great potential for improving the overall effectiveness of all drugs.
Drug companies have an especially keen interest in personalized medicine. The current model of prescribing one big-name drug to millions upon millions of patients has proven ineffective, and sometimes deadly.
Drug-maker Merck and Co. knows the dangers of the blockbuster drug model all too well. One of their products-the painkiller Vioxx-was shown to increase the risk of blood clots in a very small number of patients. As a result, a jury recently returned a $253 million verdict against the company for the death of a patient who had been taking Vioxx. And this was only the first of many lawsuits.
Right now, scientists know very little about how human genes are linked to drug side effects. Pharmacogenetics seeks to change all that. Someday all patients may undergogenetic screening. They can then be divided into different categories based on those test. Doctors will be able to take a genttic profile and immediately know which drugs are safe to prescribe, and which ones are not. Drugs won't be hand-crafted fro every patient, but rather prescribed to different populations determined by their genetic subsets.