“Have it your way,” Burger King promised 32 years ago, pushing Whoppers and heralding the era of consumer products tailored to personal tastes. Today, Lands’ End lets you create a virtual model to your measurements and cuts clothes to fit. Adidas offers shoes customized to your feet. The British bank Abbey will emblazon your doodles on a debit card.
For all this, personalization remains the exception in hard goods. But it has become the rule online. Amazon.com uses your purchase and pageview histories to create a unique Web page that includes recommendations tuned to your taste. Netflix looks at past DVD rentals and suggests future choices. Apple’s iTunes and Google Video are prodding radio and television out of the broadcast era and into the dawning age of individualized media.
Now the trend toward personalized products is moving into a new arena: pharmaceuticals. Allen Roses, senior VP of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, made headlines in late 2003 when he said, “The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 percent – only work in 30 or 50 percent of the people.” Most observers thought he was admitting failure. Actually, he was identifying a vast opportunity: the use of genetic profiles to ensure that ailing individuals receive treatments that work for them.
Prescribing medications is mostly a trial-and-error process. Doctors select the most promising medicine for a patient. If it doesn’t work, they try another. But scientists are discovering that diseases progress along physiological pathways that vary from person to person. As genomics becomes better understood, doctors will be able to use DNA tests to determine the right treatment for each individual. Genentech, Pfizer, and Gen-Probe – all on this year’s Wired 40 list – are leading the way.
The most dramatic success so far is Herceptin, a breast cancer treatment developed by Genentech. The company’s scientists discovered that breast cells in a quarter of breast cancer patients contain extra copies of a particular gene. The gene orchestrates production of a protein that encourages cell division, making this group prone to especially persistent, fast-growing tumors. Genentech created a drug to suppress that protein, and in subsequent trials, Herceptin was found to be more effective than chemotherapy in women who carry the genetic abnormality.
Patients aren’t the only ones who benefit from the personalized approach; drugmakers stand to save big money. A clinical trial that involves 1,000 targeted candidates rather than 20,000 from the general population can increase success rates and cut development time. “In the future,” says Citigroup biotech analyst Yaron Werber, “the smart companies will figure out why you responded to a drug, and why I didn’t.”
Among traditional pharmaceutical companies, one of the smartest is Pfizer. The drug powerhouse is testing two compounds that could benefit specific genotypes: Sutent for gastrointestinal tumors and kidney cancer, and CP-751,871 for bone marrow cancer. The tests to determine who should get these medications may well come from Gen-Probe, a leader in the nascent field of molecular diagnostics. The company is now working on a DNA screen to detect genetic markers associated with prostate cancer.
For pharmas, personalized medicine could bring big profits. But for the broader public, the stakes are much higher. After all, getting a burger your way is nice. Having drugs that reliably cure life-threatening diseases would be a triumph.
Who’s doing it?
Genentech
Personalized medicine
Gen-Probe
DNA screening
Apple
iTunes playlists
Netflix
Individualized recommendations
- Kevin Kelleher
credit: John Blackford
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