When I decided some months ago to try to keep you up-to-date in the field of personalized genetics, I only could include 2-3 articles in an edition. Now it takes at least a half an hour to reduce the number to 10. So here are the latest and most interesting announcements about individualized medicine.
- FDA Issues Asians-Only Epilepsy Drug Warning (WSJ Blog):
The world took another baby step toward personalized medicine today, as the FDA said people of Asian descent should be screened for a particular genetic variation before they take carbamazepine, a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder.
- Steve Murphy, the Gene Sherpa, also covered this: Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis and Pharmacogenomics
- George Church wants to sequence your genome. (Technology Review): The trait data of the 10 participants of the Personal Genome Project will be available soon.
- Taking your genes in hand (Economist):
One form of the gene, TCF7L2, is strongly linked to type 2 diabetes. Having two copies of TCF7L2 (one from each parent) doubles your risk of getting diabetes—that much is well established. But some researchers reckon that if you do not have any of the other risk factors for diabetes, your chance of getting the disease will be so low in the first place that this doubling is not worth knowing about.
- Study: Gene test can determine who benefits from chemotherapy (Chicago Tribune)
- Jason Bobe tells us the 3 modes of sharing genetic information.
- Human Genome Rug at Art Basel Spinoff, Design Miami (Wired):
Photo Credit: Robyn Ross
Let’s finish today’s edition with the words of Larry Moran, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto:
I still find it curious that there are “science bloggers” who promote these for-profit companies without ever mentioning the scam that they’re perpetrating by misleading the general public about what the tests can achieve. The kit from 23andMe costs $999.00 (US).
