Comments on: By Aligning Databases, Scientists Match Old Drugs with New Diseases

By: John M. Tax

John M. Tax — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:18:43 +0000

I’m sure that many of these drugs will produce headaches, diarrhea, blurred vision, memory loss, cancer – hey just like alcohol! Let’s do more research….

Big Pharma is not interested in cures whether patents are still in effect or not. What profit is there in one pill cures?

By: Nathan Woodhull

Nathan Woodhull — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:05:51 +0000

What scares me the most is when drug companies urge doctors to write prescriptions for “off label”conditions.Doctors are now writing scripts for powerful anti-depressants for pain treatment.These drugs carry the most powerful warning called a” black box” warning and should not be allowed for any use other than what was originally intended without extensive research to uncover dammaging side effects.Unfortunately these powerful anti-depressants can also be prescribed by nurse practioners who cannot prescribe schedule two pain medications which are far less dangerous.

By: Les

Les — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:55:42 +0000

Interesting and scarey. Once again, this points out that we really don’t know what all these drugs are doing in our system, yet Americans down them by the handful. Another venue the Epigenetics researchers ought to look at.

By: rork

rork — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:00:28 +0000

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) reliability varies from series to series. Some of the data sets are outstanding and famous and everything you hoped for, others are not-so-useful (perhaps small sample size or few transcripts measured), and some are not good. All hail the good people that run GEO though – it is vital for research.

I might add that half the fun of using the other data base (I hate calling it the connectivity map) is that the top compounds you obtain might show a pattern, such as too many being antagonists of a certain pathway. (I actually want database or software to help find that pattern, since it is hard on a nerd to look at a list of compounds and have a eureka moment about where their mechanisms share some property.) It’s telling you to start looking at that pathway harder. Often you knew that already, but sometimes not.

By: Pippa

Pippa — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:48:31 +0000

Thanks amphiox – exactly. AND this is why it is so important that we look at our political system and ensure that large companies, including but not limited to pharma, are less able to influence political decisions. Otherwise they will continue to fund political parties and hence undermine democracy through the resulting influence that this purchases. Our politicians have to be pragmatic and vote for what is good for their sponsors, rather than what is needed for the electorate. Pharma does not want lots of publicly funded research. As a business their job is to reduce competition and maximise gains for shareholders. If we, as a people, allow the rules of politics and commerce that lead to this mess we have no one but ourselves to blame. We are, after all, still pretty much a democracy!

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:08:39 +0000

I thought that new uses for old drugs were patentable? In fact, I had understood that merely re-packaging or compounding old drugs also resulted in new patent opportunities?

By: Iain

Iain — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:54:32 +0000

To me this is an interesting side note
If drugs can have some interesting beneficial unlooked for effects, could this not be said for un-beneficial effects unlooked for in common food additives? Doesn’t it warrant investigation?

By: Iain

Iain — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:50:17 +0000

Americans pay more for drugs, daily, than the rest of the world, thanks to big pharma and their patents.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:52:01 +0000

Unfortunately, through a quirk of the incentive system in pharmaceuticals, it’s unlikely that companies that first developed these drugs will invest the time and money required to test them for new uses: their patents have expired, so the companies don’t stand to profit from it.

And this is what robust publicly funding research is for, and why it is important.