{bio,medical} informatics
bookmark:
connotea
::
del.icio.us
::digg
::furl
::reddit
::yahoo::
New England Journal of Medicine
Pharmacogenomics -- Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks"Traditionally, cancer treatments have been selected on the basis of tumor type, pathological features, clinical stage, the patient's age and performance status, and other nonmolecular considerations. We have generally accepted with a certain fatalism that some patients pigeonholed into a given category will have a response to a particular therapy, whereas others will not. The difference is often viewed as a matter of luck, like the result of a coin toss, but in fact, treatment response can be predicted in some cases, whereas it is close to impossible to predict the results of a coin toss. The field of pharmacogenomics, through the study of large numbers of genes that influence drug activity, toxicity, and metabolism, provides the opportunity to tailor drug treatments and to eliminate many of the uncertainties of current therapy for cancer. "
"In this issue of the Journal, Esteller and colleagues (2) provide clinical evidence of an intriguingly different sort of mechanism -- an epigenetic one that does not involve any change in DNA sequence -- to explain the resistance of some gliomas to nitrosourea alkylating agents."
"Such comprehensive approaches to biology can be characterized as "omic" research (6) -- that is, research in which one generates large resources of information on biologic molecules in aggregate without necessarily knowing in advance which pieces of information and which correlations will prove most important. (7) "Omic" research is hypothesis-driven, but the hypothesis relates to information and its usefulness, rather than to particular molecules or processes. "Omics" began with genomics and the Human Genome Project. Then, as coined by various researchers, there came proteomics, kinomics (for the kinases in aggregate), CHOmics (for the carbohydrates), metabolomics, immunomics, toxicomics, and clinomics -- as well as compound forms, such as functional genomics, structural genomics, and pharmacogenomics. In view of the study by Esteller et al., (2) and as we search for other clinically relevant instances in which promoter methylation affects therapy, can "pharmacomethylomics" be far behind?
redux [07.11.00]
"Genes are tricksters. They can be turned on or off -- and whether they're on or off decides whether the gene-owner will develop disease.
Gene researchers have embarked on a new field of research, called epigenomics, to determine whether genes are in the on or off position. This type of marker could prove an important diagnostic or therapeutic tool for all types of cancer.
"At Johns Hopkins, researchers are performing clinical trials on about 15 patients with leukemia and other cancers to find out if epigenomics might give pharmaceutical companies a lead for developing cancer drugs.
The research, like all epigenomics research, is studying a chemical found in everyone's DNA called cytosine. Cytosine is the only chemical of the four that make up human DNA (the others are adenine, thymine, and guanine) that is prone to a phenomenon called methylation. When cytosine is methylated, it tuns off its gene. "
"For most of us, formal biology education begins with complex systems--the traditional dissection of a frog in high school biology class is virtually a rite of passage in the U.S.
But the way many people learn about and invest in biotechnology is at the smallest end of the spectrum--the genome, now often described as the "periodic table" of biology. Genomics and all its related buzzwords have been responsible for much of the media attention, government grants, and investment capital heaped on the biotech industry over the past decade.
But just as there is a whole lot of chemistry that happens in between the periodic table and a birthday cake, there is a lot of biology in between the genome and a living organism. With the completion of biology's periodic table within sight, academics and industry players alike are pondering the best way to apply our hard won knowledge.
The only problem is, the path from genome to system seems to get harder the more we learn."
[ rhetoric ]
“Bioinformatics will be at the core of biology in the 21st century. In fields ranging from structural biology to genomics to biomedical imaging, ready access to data and analytical tools are fundamentally changing the way investigators in the life sciences conduct research and approach problems. Complex, computationally intensive biological problems are now being addressed and promise to significantly advance our understanding of biology and medicine. No biological discipline will be unaffected by these technological breakthroughs.”
BIOINFORMATICS IN THE 21st CENTURY[ search ]
[ outbound ]
biospace
/
genomeweb
/
bio-it world
/
scitechdaily
/
biomedcentral
/
the panda's thumb
/
bioinformatics.org
/
nodalpoint
/
flags and lollipops
/
on genetics
/
a bioinformatics blog
/
andrew dalke
/
the struggling grad student
/
in the pipeline
/
gene expression
/
free association
/
pharyngula
/
the personal genome
/
genetics and public health blog
/
the medical informatics weblog
/
linuxmednews
/
nanodot
/
complexity digest
/
eyeforpharma
/
nsu
/
nyt science
/
bbc scitech
/
newshub
/
biology news net
/
informatics review
/
stanford
/
bmj info in practice
/
bmj info in practice
/
[ schwag ]
look snazzy and support the site at the same time by buying some snowdeal schwag !
[ et cetera ]
valid xhtml 1.0?
This site designed by
Eric C. Snowdeal III
.
© 2000-2005