Wednesday, September 26, 2001

bookmark: connotea :: del.icio.us ::digg ::furl ::reddit ::yahoo::

"Sounding an awful lot like the genomics gurus of yesteryear, proponents of proteomics declare that a "global understanding" of proteins will reveal the underlying mechanisms of disease, leading drugmakers to treatments that ablate causes rather than mask symptoms. Companies will discover a bounty of natural proteins that can serve as injectable drugs, the advocates assure, as well as an abundance of new protein targets for the "small-molecule" pills that are the cornerstone of the pharmaceutical industry. Side effects will plummet as the precision of treatments increases. A finer appreciation of the differences between the proteomes of individuals will allow doctors to tailor treatments to specific populations. And as new technologies emerge - your entire proteome on a chip? - medicine will advance in ways that even the most farsighted visionaries cannot imagine."

"Still, not everyone shares the excitement. Some leading scientists worry that yet another bill of goods is being writ before their eyes. Sydney Brenner, who helped launch the Human Genome Project, says the proteomics craze is not about new knowledge but about amassing data?most of which he predicts will have no impact on drug discovery. "I think there will be a backlash," says Brenner, now at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA. "I really think people will come to their senses. Science will just walk around them. [Proteomics] will prove to be irrelevant.""

redux [08.15.01]
GenomeWeb Study Foresees Proteomics Market Growing to $5.6B by 2006

"A new study of the proteomics market forecast that the proteomics market would grow nearly six-fold to $5.6 billion by 2006 from $963 million in 2000.

In its report, consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan said the increase would be driven by a shift towards the analysis of proteomes following the discovery that the human genome contains fewer genes than originally predicted.

"Proteomics adds value to drug discovery by charting the distribution of proteins, identifying and characterizing proteins of interest, and elucidating the participation of proteins in biochemical pathways boosting the number of potential targets around which lead compounds can be designed and screened," Eric Gay, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, said in a statement."

redux [07.11.01]
Scientific American The Post-Genome Project

"Their bold proclamation has raised a few eyebrows in the scientific community. "It's easy to say that you'll complete a comprehensive proteome map," notes Marc Vidal of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "But none of us knows what that means." There may be only one genome, but when it comes to the proteome, different proteins can be more or less active in different cells at different times during development, under different physiological conditions or in different disease states. The proteome's nature "makes it hard to define what we're doing--not just Myriad, but all of us," remarks Joshua LaBaer, director of the Institute of Proteomics at Harvard Medical School. "There's no such thing as a human proteome," adds Keith L. Williams, CEO of Proteome Systems, headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Look at the liver, for example, he says: "After a glass of red wine, you'll have a different proteome."

redux [06.20.01]
Forbes Proteins Are Back To Confuse Investors

"Scientists thought about trying to catalogue all the proteins in the body a decade ago.

But it seemed impossible, and was therefore impossible to fund. Researchers moved on to the much simpler job of sequencing the human genome.

They were right to do so. Cataloguing proteins turns out to be downright confusing. Lately, more and more biotech companies are entering a field they call "proteomics," an ugly word searching for a focus group."

redux [03.31.01]
The Scientist Is a Human Proteome Project Next?
[requires 'free' registration]

"A commonly expressed opinion is that a single Human Proteome Project can never match HGP's success. Eric S. Lander , director of the Whitehead Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Mass., notes that biologists simply don't know how to characterize the proteome "from end to end, nailing every protein. The tools are not ready. And it's not clear that [such a project] makes sense." He contrasts proteomics to HGP where "there is a certain fixed number of base pairs--about three billion--and we were going to get them all. And so it had a beginning and an end to it."

redux [01.31.01]
GenomeWeb Proteomics Effort Shouldn't Mimic Genome Project, Experts Say

"Can sequencing do for the proteome what it did for the genome?

On Wednesday, a number of world-renowned researchers in the field of proteomics issued a resounding " no."

Instead of devoting their efforts to decoding the human proteome, proteomics researchers should focus on developing a larger picture of protein structure, function, and pathways within cells and organisms, panelists said at a New York Academy of Sciences briefing entitled "The Promise of Proteomics."

"When a company has phenomenal success with strategy A, you want to do strategy A on the next subject," said John Richards, a professor of organic and biochemistry at California Institute of Technology, referring to current corporate attempts to map the proteome.

"This doesn't work," he said."