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Gene Map to Personalise Patient's Medicine

Posted on: Thursday, 27 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

By JAMES MORGAN

THE dream of creating medicines tailor-made for individual patients has come a step closer after scientists created the first map of human genetic variation - the HapMap.

The map, the result of three years' work by more than 200 scientists, eventually will allow doctors to personalise prescription medicine and dietary advice to individual patients.

It has long been known that people respond differently to drugs, toxic substances and foods, according to subtle differences in their genes. However, because the nature of these differences are often unknown, doctors have no choice but to prescribe medicines in the knowledge that they may have little or no effect on as many as half of the patients.

The Hapmap will allow scientists to pinpoint these differences. Doctors will then be able to prescribe the right drug and dosage for each patient.

Special diets and other lifestyle strategies could also be carefully tailored to an individual's genetic make-up. It may also be used to find the genetic factors that respond to good health and long life.

Scientists created the map by charting genetic differences between 269 individuals originating from Africa, the Far East and western Europe. The map records tiny variations in the genetic code that are grouped into inherited families called "haplotypes".

Each haplotype is a combination of minute differences in DNA. More than one million of these single-letter differences in the genetic code, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or "snips", are represented in the HapMap.

Scientists will now find it much easier to track down particular snips associated with certain diseases.

Dr David Altshuler, from the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, co-leader of the project, said: "This represents a milestone for medical research.

"Built upon the foundation laid by the human genome sequence, the HapMap provides a powerful new tool for exploring the root causes of common diseases.

"Such an understanding is required for researchers to develop new and much-needed approaches to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases such as diabetes, bipolar disorder, cancer and many others."

Source: Herald, The; Glasgow (UK)

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