Tag: genomics

Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare

An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for the fourth quarter of 2023

A Chinese study uncovers a new use for an old drug Bleeding in the small intestine is often due to vascular malformations and is difficult to diagnose and manage because 1) the area is hard to reach with a scope and 2) bleeding tends to be intermittent.  Existing approaches are cumbersome and far from satisfactory, which makes a recent blinded RCT study conducted in China exploring thalidomide use in those patients valuable – not only did it show a significant decrease in bleeding episodes after a course of 4 months

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An excellent July vintage: an opinionated take on NEJM highlights for July 2022

Tirzepatide in pole position As previously described in this blog, GLP-1 agonists initially designed to treat glycemia in Type-2 diabetes are emerging as powerful weight loss agents in obesity independent of diabetic status. Recently, tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Lilly, approved May 2022) which combines GLP-1 and GIP activity has shown potential to be best in class, and this is supported by a 72-week study that randomized 2539 obese individuals to 3 different tirzepatide doses or placebo. The results are nothing short of spectacular with ~-21% mean change in weight at the optimal

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Wrapping up 2021: An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for November-December 2021

In search of a diagnosis: deploying genomics at scale A substantial number of children have a disease identified as “rare” without having any kind of causative diagnosis (autism is not a causative diagnosis!). In a UK pilot study, 2,183 proband children were referred for exome sequencing with additional sequencing of family members if warranted. The overall diagnostic yield was surprisingly high, about 25% overall. Of the approximately half of probands who had neurological or sensory disorder, an explanatory diagnosis was reached in almost 40% of the cases. Two thoughts: 1)

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The road ahead for genomic testing

New molecular diagnostics, especially tests based on next-generation sequencing and gene-panels, could revolutionize how diseases are evaluated. But experience shows that insurers won’t cover these tests just because they’re available – they need to improve clinical care. Here, we explore how researchers and test developers can prove value, and improve their chances at broad clinical uptake. Outside the niche realm of self-pay (where buyers have very different expectations[1]), the business opportunity of new molecular tests is driven by payer-coverage and reimbursement. Payers are beginning to manage[2] high-cost (>$1,000) lab tests

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The Puzzling Future of Healthcare

This post is from a talk at the 2021 Link Ventures CEO summit. Original talk: Transcript: The practice of medicine has always been an information problem. Clinicians seek to diagnose an ailment and to prescribe a cure based on an incomplete understanding of what’s happening in a patient’s body as it relates to an incomplete set of knowledge about diagnoses and treatments.  This aspect of medicine has remained the same for centuries even as our collective understanding of medicine has gone through three major phases.  Until the 18th century, much

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An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for October 2019

Genomic applications and scalability Two very different papers about applications of genomics, one for a very common clinical scenario, the other for an ultra-rare disease. It is well known that while clopidogrel (now available as a generic but branded as Plavix) is an excellent antiplatelet agent for a majority of patients, it works poorly in some due to individual genetic idiosyncrasies of cytochrome driven drug metabolism. Since then, other agents (tigracrelor AKA Brilinta, prasugrel AKA Effient) with a similar mechanism of action but more consistent metabolism have come on market,

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Busy summer: An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for July/August 2019

Is the lack of new (non-viral) antibiotics a market failure? A lament about the lack of success in getting the biopharma industry to invest sustainably in the development of new antibiotics against highly-resistant organisms, and a recommendation “it is time to seriously consider the establishment of nonprofit organizations for developing these lifesavings drugs”.  Let’s be clear; the reason economic viability of this therapeutic area is problematic is due to three confluent factors: (1) treatment is curative – i.e. does not provide recurrent revenues (2) the targeted population is small (3)

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Fishing for nucleic acids: An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for June 2019

Huntington’s disease: light at the end of the tunnel? The awful thing about Huntington’s is that in most cases, people know they are going progressively lose their mind at an early age, but there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.  Recently there has been tremendous excitement around suppressing toxic huntingtin production in the brain by using antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) administered intrathecally (i.e. in the cerebrospinal fluid through the spine). Two ASOs are in full blown clinical testing: HTTRx (Ionis and Roche) which does not discriminate between mutant and

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An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for March 2019

Target assessment with genetic polymorphisms Please bear with me for a long (but interesting!) story. Bempedoic acid (Esperion) is an inhibitor of ATP citrate lyase (ACLY), an enzyme in the cholesterol synthesis pathway (upstream of HMG-CoA reductase, the target of statins). In a study of 2,230 patients at high risk for cardiovascular events, on maximum statin therapy, and LDL > 70 (basically the PCSK9 target population), bempedoic acid was well tolerated and lowered the LDL by around 16% – a substantial effect. This would potentially position bempedoic acid, an oral

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On the uses of genetic information in disease: An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for December 2018

Genetic trade secrets In 2012, the US Supreme Court decided a case known as “Prometheus” establishing that therapeutic methods based on biomarkers were not patentable – this essentially blocked one of the two main avenues to monetizing intellectual property from the very hard clinical work of figuring out personalized medicine, i.e. what works for whom. The other avenue that would remain is that of trade secrets, and I for one, have been waiting for the other shoe to drop.  A hint comes from a study on ovarian cancer just published

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EHRs + Genomics = Drugs? – An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for March 2018

GWAS, Regeneron and Geisinger, and liver disease Genome wide association studies (GWAS) look at broad populations for gene variants associated with a particular phenotype. Often, like in Type II diabetes, one finds hundreds of genes correlated with disease, and that’s obviously not very helpful. In lucky cases there are only a few variants, and that gives clues on potential underlying mechanisms of disease. But for the very lucky, there is a jackpot which is finding a variant that is actually protective against the disease – this is what happened with

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An opinionated take on NEJM highlights for August 2016: cleanliness is not next to healthiness, testing before thinking, a long slog for precision medicine

There is such a thing as too much hygiene The prevalence of asthma in children has increased dramatically over the last few decades. Observational studies have shown that children in “dirty” environments such as farms seem to be relatively protected from asthma.  A theory is that the lack of exposure to microbes leads to higher sensitivity to allergens, but this causality has been hard to show. Amish and Hutterite farm communities are genetically similar, but Amish rely on animals instead of machinery, and Amish children have much lower incidence of

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NEJM Highlights for May 2016: Referral for surgery, and a miscellany of interesting biochemistry

Surgical volume and referral for surgery: The impact of surgical volume on outcomes has been well documented, but is it top of mind with physicians referring patients to surgery? Readers of the Journal were polled on a hypothetical scenario whereby a community physician would be referring a patient in need of a major surgical procedure to either a nearby community hospital with a well-respected general surgeon doing approximately 5 of these cases a year versus a tertiary medical center 40 miles away. The great majority of readers chose the option

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NEJM Highlights April 2015

The rise, fall, and rebirth of the Chinese healthcare system A fascinating account of the evolution of the Chinese healthcare system which almost seems to be an upside-down picture of the rest of the country’s development. Tremendous public health improvements occurred in the 50s, 60s, and 70s but the transition to a free market model of healthcare in the 80s seems to have been a disaster only mitigated by the general increase in wealth of the population. Seeing this as a major threat to social stability, the Chinese government has been

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NEJM Highlights March 2015: Progress against Crohn’s, PCSK9 inhibitors coming through, comparative effectiveness for diabetic macular edema, Eric Lander encourages the FDA on genomic testing regulation

A promising agent for Crohn’s Disease, a miserable illness Crohn’s is an inflammatory bowel disease that is notoriously unpredictable; flares can affect any part of the digestive tract and lead to grave complications. In this double-blind phase 2 study, patients were dosed with mongersen (licensed by Celgene) an anti-sense oligonucleotide that down-regulates the expression of a protein implicated in the inflammatory cascade. In general these classes of medications have to be given parenterally but in this case the target is the gut so it can be taken orally. At two weeks

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