Personalized Drugs? Several biotechnology companies are racing to find so-called SNPs (pronounced snips), places in the genetic code where one person’s DNA differs from another’s by a single letter. Pharmaceutical companies hope to use these genetic alterations to uncover the minute inborn differences that make some people particularly susceptible to certain diseases. With that knowledge, drug makers intend to develop safer, more potent drugs that can more precisely target the variety of biological quirks that underlie major diseases, such as cancer. The genetic variations (over 120,000 identified to date) will help the companies evaluate various drugs to determine which patients are most likely to respond, or which patients are most likely to suffer with side effects. Ultimately, they hope their findings will lead to a new era of personalized medicine, in which treatments are tailored to an individual’s unique genetic profile.
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