Thursday > June 1 > 2006 
  
Health care's new frontier
spying illness 'markers'
  
Tom Blackwell 
National Post 

http://www.biomarkerinc.com/html/home.htm
Thursday, June 01, 2006


TORONTO - A cross-section of top scientists gathered yesterday to talk up what
some see as the next revolution in medicine, a marriage of biology and
technology that could help detect disease earlier, discover new drugs faster and
better target specific illnesses.

The end result would be savings for the beleaguered health care system and more
help for the seriously ill, predicted speakers at the Ontario Genomics Institute
conference.

The idea is to use high-resolution medical imaging, which can actually reveal
what is going on inside bodies at the molecular level, to detect so-called
biomarkers. Those are the proteins and other molecules that can indicate if
someone has a disease such as breast cancer, or is prone to get it, and could be
the secret to what causes a specific ailment.

Knowing which biomarkers to look out for, doctors can more readily take
preventive action against a disease instead of waiting for full-blown symptoms.

And drug researchers focused on biomarkers can more rapidly devise medicines
that hone in on a specific disease trigger, while learning early on whether the
drug's toxic effects outweigh its benefits, the experts said.

"People are very excited about this field, and I think for good reason," said
Dr. Kenneth Evans, president of the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network.

"There are several very exciting areas of imaging that could lead to
breakthroughs that change how we go about doing things."

The symposium, co-sponsored by GE Healthcare, which makes imaging machines, was
designed to bring together scientists from different disciplines to kickstart
development of a new filed of medicine. Dr. Evans noted that numerous popular
drugs used today are ineffective for many patients. Up to 60% of depression
sufferers, for instance, do not respond to antidepressants, while 50-75% of
diabetics are not helped by their medication, he said.

Drugs are used to treat a broad range of patients, instead of targeting specific
populations with particular traits. Breast cancer in the past was treated as one
disease, whereas there are several different causes of the disease, which happen
to occur in the same part of the body, he said.

Finding biomarkers -- like a particular protein present only on the surface of
certain cancer cells -- would make it possible to better treat patients with
that illness and avoid giving expensive medicine to those who will not benefit,
said Dr. Raymond Reilly, who is studying molecular imaging at the University of
Toronto.

Molecular imaging has the potential to pinpoint such biomarkers better than
other tests available now, he said.

Herceptin is one of the first individualized drugs to come on the market. It is
designed to fight breast cancer in the 30% of patients who have the HER-2 gene
in their tumours.

Even so, only about half of patients who get the hugely expensive drug respond
favourably to it. Molecular imaging could find more specific targets for the
drug, allowing doctors to narrow its use on fewer patients, and could identify
why some develop resistance to it, said Dr. Reilly.

Much of the massive cost in developing drugs now results from the fact that many
are found to be ineffective or unreasonably dangerous only after extensive
development and testing on humans. Finding biomarkers early in the process would
help drug companies rule out certain drugs sooner, cutting costs, he said.

"If you have a good marker ... you could save yourself years, and millions and
millions of dollars in drug development," said Dr. Evans.

Dr. Brent Zanke, a senior scientist with Cancer Care Ontario, said he has seen
numerous new drugs come on the market that cost tens of thousands of dollars a
year, yet provide only modest benefit. "There is a way to do things more
cheaply."

The cutting edge in molecular imaging so far is the Positron Emission Tomography
(PET) scan, said Dr. Reilly. It can actually create images of glucose use by
rapidly multiplying cancer cells, indicating the presence of some cancers.

The success of PET scans is "driving the enthusiasm of scientists" to develop
more molecular imaging technology, Dr. Reilly said. And yet, in Ontario, the
provincial government is still studying whether to even fund the technology's
use in the health care system.

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C National Post 2006
 




 
 
 
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