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Progress In The Field Of Personalized Medicine And What We Can Expect Next

November 28th, 2011 by Berci in Expert Interviews, Research
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The third edition of The Case for Personalized Medicine (PDF) was released a week ago and I had a chance to do an interview with Edward Abrahams, Ph.D. of the Personalized Medicine Coalition.  The new edition is a primer that highlights the progress in the field of personalized medicine for policymakers, researchers, and business leaders.

• How many prominent examples of personalized medicine might we have next year?

It’s impossible for us to know how many prominent examples of personalized medicine products will be available a year from now, but we project that the rapid acceleration in the number of new products coming onto the market will continue. When we published the first edition of The Case for Personalized Medicine in 2006 – there were only 13 available products; when we published the second edition in 2009, there were 37 products available, and now, in 2011, there are 72.

• Sometimes lecturers use two numbers: 7 billion and 3 billion referring to the mass sequencing of everyone’s DNA in the world. When could it happen, what is your estimation? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Sudoku-Solving E. Coli

November 30th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Research
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E. coli is a Gram negative rod-shaped bacterium that is a regular inhabitant of the human gastrointestinal tract and certain strains can cause a lot of trouble. A team from the University of Tokyo in Japan, however, have manipulated the bacterium to perform a more noble task: Solving Sudoku.

The bacterium managed to solve 4×4 grid Sudoku puzzles, and in theory the more common 9×9 grid puzzles should be solvable as well. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Do You Own Your Genome?

May 6th, 2010 by PhilBaumannRN in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Research
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As the costs of sequencing our DNA shrink and the roles of digital media in our lives expand, we will need to understand who (or what) controls the ownership, access and use of our genomic information.

From state regulation to Google to Facebook, who controls the acquisition, transmission and replication of our genomic information and material will become an important battle in the 21st century. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*