Last week there were several interesting articles on personalized medicine that are of interest to the NF community.
The NY Times published a two part series headlined A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Curesby Nicholas Wade, and Awaiting the Gene Payoffby Andrew Pollack.
It is difficult to argue that the expected benefits from the Human Genome Project have met projections made at the time of the projects completion in 2000. In hindsight these expectations look overly optimistic. However, as we look at the research landscape today and all the work that is being done, I can’t help but borrow the baseball metaphor that we are only in the second inning.
Evidence of this is an article in Wired magazine about an announcment expected this Thursday of a joint project between 23andMme, the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center to enroll up to 10,000 people with Parkinson’s Disease, get them genotyped using the 23andMe platform, and collect phenotypic information. It is a long stated goal of the Children’s Tumor Foundation to establish a patient registry and bio bank that will bring these capabilities to the NF patient and research community. While we are not in a position to announce anything today, it is an area of key interest. More to come…
