Ozempic and Wegovy are already changing the obesity landscape in America. This breakthrough has been so much described and debated in terms of cosmetic benefits and medical moral hazard that it’s easy to forget that obesity is one of the biggest risk factors for preventable death. . in the United States.next generation alternative may prove to be even more effectiveand there are indications of significant off-label effects: at least anecdotally, in some patients the drug Appears to curb compulsive behavior in a variety of difficult-to-treat addictions.
The first person to receive Crispr gene therapy in the United States was treated for sickle cell disease just four years ago, but it has since been expanded to test for congenital blindness, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and HIV. ing. His is the only two applications for such a treatment to be submitted to the FDA, but overall, about 400 million people worldwide suffer from one or more diseases caused by single-gene mutations. and is theoretically easy to fix with Crispr. And when Doudna imagines his application ten or twenty years from now, the possibilities sound almost euphoric. For example, providing single-gene protection against high cholesterol and thus coronary artery disease, or theoretically inserting a kind of gene prophylactic drug. Against Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
“Can you really do that?”
In January, we talked about paper in nature The rate of what the authors call scientific breakthroughs has been steadily declining over time, partly as a result of dysfunctional academic pressures, with researchers becoming more narrowly specialized than before. , suggested that they often play around with the fringes of well-understood science.
But when it comes to new vaccines and treatments, the opposite seems more true. A whole field of research cultivated over decades is finally bearing real fruit. Does this mean that we are on an exponential upward curve towards radically extending lifespans and eliminating cancer altogether? No, progress is more piecemeal and scattered. In fact, some believe that progress should go even faster.
Amid the pandemic, there have been many calls for further acceleration, including the cost of drug development, which has doubled every decade since the 1970s, perhaps through the redesign of clinical trials and the adoption of so-called human trials. Others stress the need for cuts. Through challenge trials, or streamlining the drug approval process. Graham, now Senior Advisor for Global Health Equity at Morehouse College of Medicine, highlights global distribution and access issues. “Will the new technology actually reach where it’s needed most?” “We already have the biology and science we need,” he says. “The question for me is, can it actually be done?”
