.gen Technologies Inc.

New designer drug olaparib, when used with individuals who have a specific kind of breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, exploits a genetic weakness of the cancer and stalls or reverses tumor growth – and it’s a lot easier to handle than chemotherapy or radiation therapy. This new treatment uses both our knowledge of what cells are doing at a molecular level and also the advance genetic knowlege of a specific biomarker gene within the targeted cancer cells.

Being able to design a molecule to save lives is a very exciting idea. Many people on my friends list remember the introduction of protease inhibitors in the mid-90s, and how suddenly people with HIV weren’t dying anymore. Combining designer drugs like olaparib with the advance genomic knowledge of which patients can benefit from these drugs is exactly what we’re working toward with personalized medicine.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22928/

This week Microsoft announced it will purchase the Rosetta Biosoftware division from Merck. This looks like a huge win/win/win combo; Merck gets out of a software business it doesn’t really “get”, Microsoft instantly becomes a serious player in the bioinformatics space with partnerships with Affymetrix and Illumina, and the biotech field gets serious software engineering for drug discovery and personal health.
 
I’ll be at Microsoft’s Connected Health Conference next week and will report back on what I learn there!
 
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/06/01/microsoft-dipping-toe-deeper-into-life-sciences-buys-rosetta-assets-from-merck/

We’ll be at the Microsoft Connected Health Conference 2009 June 10 – June 12, where we’ll hear about Microsoft’s strategy in the Healthcare space, and find out more about Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Rosetta and integration with the Amalga Life Sciences product. Contact us to let us know what we find out while we’re there for you and your organization!

Notes from what sounds like a great breakout session at the BIO conference in Atlanta last week, charting a pathway to personalized medicine by integrating biomarker tests into drug prescriptions. I would love to have been there for this conversation!
 
The gist: we have some ability today to predict whether a person will respond to a certain treatment by looking at biomarkers in their genome. However, there are business model and regulatory hurdles to expanding this ability. Partnership mechanisms between therapy providers and diagnostic providers will be key to overcoming these hurdles.
 
http://www.genengnews.com/blog/item.aspx?id=519