Will Genomics Lead to Designer Medication?

Watch as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Eric Green, MD, discusses how he believes research could affect the future of medicine.

Transcript

00:00

People tend to think, oh, we're going to have a unique medication for each individual. No, because almost inevitably, if you have a little DNA

00:09

difference over here that changes this little circuit over here and as a result you're hypertensive almost for certain

00:15

with some rare exceptions, almost for certain, many, many other people in this world have that circuit off, as well because of that same DNA difference.

00:22

And so if we figure it out for you, we can get a drug that particularly affects that circuit, it may work for 10% of all hypertensive.

00:31

But wouldn't it be brilliant if when somebody comes in with hypertension instead of just randomly picking up stuff off the shelf because you don't know what circuit's broken,

00:38

we could proactively figure out. Ah, you're one of those people with this circuit problem. I know the best medicine for you.