Bringing innovation to your fingertips

A message from I&C National Director and Founder Ryan Witt:

The reason I do what I am doing is because all this knowledge was under my nose, when I was searching for a therapy for my grandfather–day-in and day-out–for a year.  His physician didn’t mention these innovations, and I couldn’t find them.  At I&C, we are here to share with you what is going on in medical innovation — right now.  This innovation we share here is coming forward, slowly but surely, paving its way into the “Standard of Care” for nearly every disease and illness.  So please check out our education programs, and help us in spreading an awareness of these innovations to the rest of the world.

Notable Remarks on Innovations We’re Working On

Dr. Von Eschenbach, former Director of the National Cancer Institute and FDA

Start at 3min 6 seconds into video–

“Currently, physicians prescribe medication through a trial-and-error method of matching patients with the right drugs… As pharmacogenomics becomes more advanced, physicians eventually will be able to prescribe medication based on an individual patient’s genotype, maximizing effectiveness while minimizing side effects.” — American Medical Association

“Because ‘one drug does not fit all’ we need to invest in developing a tailor-made, individualized, medicinal approach.” Prasun J Mishra, Laboratory of Cancer Biology & Genetics, National Cancer Institute, NIH.  Click to read more

“We’re on that cusp.  All this investment we’ve made in trying to enable pharmacogenomics from the pharma side, the biotech side, the investor side and the regulatory environment is starting to yield results, and that’s going to go quickly.”  Tom Willis, ParAllele BioScience

“There are multiple different [classes of] antidepressants… If you had done all the pharmacogenomics synonymous with those groups, you could tell the clinician–based on the DNA variants from a single patient he’s looking at–which major therapeutic group that patient would best respond to.  That’s one of the real promises of pharmacogenomics,” says Mark McCarnish, chief medical officer of pharmacogenomics company Perlegen Sciences.

Wired Magazine:

23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics

$232 Billion Personalized Medicine Market to Grow 11 Percent Annually, says PricewaterhouseCoopers

Click to read more (source: PR Newswire)

“Personalized medicine means that we can develop drugs which are more effective, safer and ultimately also more cost-effective.” – Roche CEO, Severin Schwan

“If a new product captures the public’s attention and patients push their doctors and insurers for the genetic test to determine if it is right for them, the mainstream of pharmacogenomics products could be accelerated.” –PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report on Personalized Medicine

“Oncology is at the leading edge of the new age in molecular medicine.”  American Society of Clinical Oncology

“The rapid advances in our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of individual tumors and improvements in unravelling host biology are certain to translate increasingly into management of individual patients. The pace of these advances mandates that ASCO develop a robust educational effort to keep members current with technologies that will have an impact on clinical management.”  — ASCO President-Elect ‘11-’12, Dr. Michael P. Link

“Personalized genetic testing can have significant meaning in helping consumers focused on prevention and wellness live better, healthier lives – something that P&G has always been committed to.”  Nathan Estruth, VP of P&G’s FutureWorks:  Source

Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI)

Companies Working on this Innovation

Navigenics, 23 and Me, Novartis, Life Technologies, GE Healthcare, Arrayit, Aggendia, Illumina, Affymetrix, Proctor & Gamble, Merck, Genentech, AstraZeneca, Beckman Coulter…

Source 1: Abbott (ABT); Alexion (ALXN); Amedisys (AMED); Arrayit Corp (ARYC); Assisted Living Concepts (ALC); Baxter (BAX); Bio-Rad (BIO); Cardiovascular Systems (CSII); Celera (CRA); Cleveland BioLabs, Inc. (CBLI); DaVita (DVA); Fresenius (FMS); Gen-Probe (GPRO); Genomic Health (GHDX); Genzyme (GENZ); Haemonetics (HAE); Hanger Orthopedic Group (HGR); Hologic (Hologic); Hologic (HOLX); Hospira (HSP); ICU Medical (ICUI); IRIS International (IRIS); Illumina (ILMN); Immucor (BLUD); Intuitive Surgical (ISRG); Inverness (IMA); LabCorp (LH); Life Technologies (LIFE); Luminex (LMNX); MEDNAX (MD); Meridian Bioscience (VIVO); Millipore (MIL); Mindray Medical (MR); Myriad Genetics (MYGN); Providence (PRSC); Qiagen (QGEN); Qiagen (Qiagen); Quest (DGX); Quidel (QDEL); Res-Care (RSCR); Roche (RHHBY); Thermo Fisher (TMO); Volcano (VOLC); ZOLL Medical (ZOLL)

Source 2 & 3:  BML, Inc., Diagnosticos Da America S.A. (DASA), Quest Diagnostics, Inc.; Unilabs Group; diaDexus, Inc.; Myriad Genetics, Inc.; Veridex, LLC (J&J Co.); Genomic Health, Inc.; Agendia B.V.; Abbott Molecular; BD Diagnostics; Digene Corporation; Beckman Coulter, Inc.; bioMerieux SA; Gen-Probe, Inc.; Roche Molecular Diagnostics; Siemens; Medical Solutions Diagnostics; BioSite, Inc.; Cepheid; Pure Play MDx; Celera Group; Chiron Corporation (Novartis); Dako A/S; Exact Sciences Corporation; Innogenetics NV; DNA Methylation MDx; Orion Genomics LLC; Epigenomics AG; Array Platforms; Affymetrix, Inc.; Luminex Corporation; Nanogen, Inc

…

Molecular Medicine

Personalized medicine vs Advanced Cancer by Molecular Profiling

“The study involved 66 patients who had failed to respond to between two and 13 different drugs for a variety of advanced cancers, including breast, colon, and prostate cancers… In 18 (27%) of the patients, the personalized treatment delayed cancer progression, compared with previous treatments. These patients lived an average of 10 months, compared with five months for the entire study group.”  Click to read more or here or here (same results covered; diff’t writer)

“The great promise of personalized medicine is the potential to tailor treatments to a patient’s individual tumor while sparing the healthy tissue. This requires obtaining the molecular profile of the tumor to identify the changes or abnormalities that have occurred. Currently, the only way to do this is by biopsy of the tumor itself.” – Researcher coming up with a new approach to profiling tumors molecularly.  (American Assoc. of Cancer Research article)

A clinical trial by one of the best cancer centers in the world, MD Anderson, “to establish a program for the molecular profiling of patients with advanced cancer.” Click here to read more

Scientific abstract on using a Needle Core Biopsy to molecular profile a tumor (using RNA microarrays).  Click to read more

Image-guided needle core biopsies — “complications are rare” (in pediatric oncology).  Click to read more

Published in Nov 2008 – “Our results suggest that microarray analysis of kidney biopsies may be a valuable adjunct to pathologic diagnosis of renal masses. The use of renal biopsy of renal masses with subsequent molecular analysis of biopsy tissue by microarray analysis could potentially identify patients with benign or indolent renal tumors, thus avoiding unnecessary surgical procedures on those patients. Future studies will be required to assess the sensitivity and specificity of this approach in the context of a broader panel of tumor subtypes.”  Click to read more

(May 2009) “Individuals from five thoracic oncology centers in the United States recently met to discuss how to integrate molecular profiling into the care of all patients with carcinoma of the lung.”  Click to read more

“‘Today every breast cancer patient has her tumor classified by its genetic subtype.’  He thinks that most cancers, if not all, can be broken down into genetic subtypes.” – Dennis Slamon, oncologist at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UCLA.  Click to read more

Continuing Medical Education (how physicians are required to stay up-to-date on the latest advances in medicine) on “Personalized Medicine”  Click to view more

Ask your doctor about integrating molecular profiling into your medical care today.

Combination Therapies & “Drug Repositioning”

Alzheimer’s:

“Previous studies have shown that production of amyloid plaque is prevented or reduced in brains of mice when either of two enzymes, beta-secretase or gamma-secretase is inhibited. Yet, it has been found that overly inhibiting these enzymes produces dangerous side effects… the researchers developed a “cocktail” of inhibitors in aged Alzheimer-like mice that moderately inhibited both beta-secretase and gamma-secretase enzymes. The technique appeared to reduce the production of amyloid plaque in the brains of the mice—without the adverse side-effects.” Click to read more

Cancer:

Article on Glioblastoma Multiforme (a subtype of Brain Cancer)

“GBM tumours are often resistant to current treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation therapy.  However, the Wake Forest team here have taken a different approach; they wanted to find out if a cocktail of just a few drugs could be used to treat every single patient with GBM.  They analysed the ‘molecular signature’ of GBM and identified three proteins present in elevated levels in these cancers.  They examined 76 specimens of brain tumour, including 46 GBMs, and nine normal brain samples and discovered that every GBM tumour examined had at least one marker present and 95 % of the tumours had at least two.”  Click to read more

Hepatitis C Virus

Click to read more

Drug Repositioning summit

Click to see more

BioVista

“Using artificial intelligence, BioVista Inc. created a drug profiling platform that can identify new uses for existing compounds… The BioVista team selected unmet medical needs and applied its platform to identify generic drugs that might find a new use meeting those needs.  The strategy resulted in an internal pipeline comprising more than 30 repurposed generic compounds. None of the molecules or original indications has been disclosed.  Between 30 percent and 45 percent of drug approvals over the last few years have been expansions of existing products into new indications.”  Click to read more

UCLA Software to find new uses

Click to read more

UCI chemo targeting liver cells

Click to read more