Mark Zoller, acting scientific director of the Genomics Center, expects to finger the target gene by the end of this year.
DeCode is now screening for compounds to target the gene and a key receptor.
Other companies, including Pfizer and Schering-Plough, started developing drugs to target the gene, called CCR5.
DeCode is screening for compounds to target the gene and a key receptor.
When a drug company feels reasonably confident that it has a gene target, the next stage is to use that gene to manufacture the corresponding protein en masse.
In the current versions of their vaccines, Aventis and Merck target slightly different gene fragments.
Typically, it has taken pharmaceutical companies four or five years to go from gene target to small molecule.
That part, the insertion of the desired gene into the target crop's chromosomes, can be done in a variety of ways.
Wong (now at Stanford University) figured the mutated gene might make an ideal target for a vaccine, as it creates an abnormal protein not seen in healthy cells.
This is because the cause of a rare form of cancer often can be narrowed down to a single gene, providing a clear target, and because few other effective remedies exist, so that the promise of a new drug can be instantly visible.
Instead of aiming at broad tumor categories, such as all patients with lung cancer or colon cancer, the new medicines target specific subsets of patients whose tumors have particular gene mutations.
"Before you count genes, you really need to define what a gene is, " says Daniel Shoemaker , director of target discovery at Rosetta.
Unlike human fishing techniques, which tend not to discriminate between sick and healthy specimens, sharks are selective: they target weakened prey, thereby keeping fish populations healthy and strengthening the gene pool.
The new drugs target very specific subsets of patients with the disease and will come with gene tests to pluck out which patients are likely to respond.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a research note this morning that he thinks Apple remains on target for an October launch for the iPhone 5 despite the reported 28 nm baseband radio chip shortage at Qualcomm.
FORBES: Apple: Piper Sees iPhone 5 In Oct Despite QCOM Chip Shortage
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