Designer drugs from our genes around corner

By SIMON COLLINS

Personalised "designer drugs" made for each individual's genetic heritage are likely to be available within a few years.

Experts from the world's two main gene-sequencing centres in Britain and the United States say it will soon be possible to work out the sequence of each individual's genes.

Treatments will then be designed to avoid side-effects - not using chemotherapy, for example, on cancer patients who are averse to it.

People whose genes make them more likely to become obese or have heart problems will be able to change their lifestyles to reduce their risks.

One of the experts, Dr Neil Hall from Britain's Sanger Institute, has already led a successful project on the genetic sequence of a parasite that causes malaria - a disease that is said to have killed half the people who ever lived.

"In endemic areas, it kills half the children who are born," he said in Auckland. "Every few hours it kills more people than ever died of Sars."

The other expert, Dr Owen White of the Institute for Genomic Research near Washington, DC, said the genes of about 100 bacteria and 10 more complex species had been sequenced. Progress was speeding up dramatically.

"There's some technology that is being developed now that we can expect to see in three to five years that may make it possible to do literally a bacterium in a day," he said.

"Even now there are drugs on the market which are designed for certain individuals. That's going to become much more important as we start to understand it."

The two men are leading "masterclasses" this week organised by the Royal Society of New Zealand, Fulbright NZ, the British Council and Montana Wines.

They said scientists now had "some idea" of what about half the genes found in some living organisms did.

"For the other half, we have no idea what they do," Dr Hall said.

He said the sequencing of the genes in the malaria parasite gave medical researchers a "roadmap" that could lead eventually to a successful drug.

"There are groups in the US, the UK and Holland and in Australia which are developing vaccines, and most of those programmes are influenced hugely by the genome project because it has generated every possible target for a vaccine," he said.

"The challenge is to identify which ones are going to be useful.

"We have tried to identify all the different metabolic processes that are going on in the parasite, and any drug has to be able to knock out some of those metabolic processes."

He said drug companies were not interested in malaria because it hit people only in poor countries who could not afford to pay for drugs. Instead, governments in the Group of Eight (G8) rich countries had created a worldwide fund for malaria research.

However, he hoped that a drug company would take over once a successful drug was ready for human testing.

"The clinical trials can really only be done at the moment by a big company because of the cost and because they've got the infrastructure to do it," he said.

www.masterclass.org.nz