Biotech professor reveals DNA milestone
The Centennial College HP campus hosted guest speaker Dr. Dennis Grant, who introduced the general public to an exciting prospect: personalized medicine.
Grant, Professor and Chair of the Pharmacology and Toxicology department at the University of Toronto, visited the campus on Jan. 20, which launches a series of free public lectures that the Biotechnology department is offering every month.
Personalized medicine works through the deciphering of DNA, which then enables scientists to figure out how it reacts to certain drugs.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to know in advance which one of the agents in different drugs is effective on you rather than going down a list of possible pharmaceuticals?” Grant said. “Once drugs are developed, how do we prescribe them?”
Grant illustrated this point by giving an example. A woman was prescribed a standard blood thinner, Coumadin, to treat her blood clots. She reacted so badly to the regular dosage that she had to be treated for hemorrhaging, which is a steady loss of blood. Her unique gene structure reacted with the drug in a way that it made it a lot more potent than it would have been on most other patients. Grant believes if pretests were done on her, these negative side effects could have been avoided.
“The use of novel genetic technology to develop better medicines and predictive tests to determine the right dose of the right drug, in the right patient, at the right time,” Grant said. “The amount of money that is spent treating bad reactions to medications exceeds the amount of money that is spent on drugs themselves.”
Currently, phamacogenetics isn’t implemented in clinics. The first step is to get medical professionals educated in it. Centennial College student, Angela Ferrao, believes in Grant’s work and that “The whole point is getting the doctors educated about it and getting the masses educated.”
Grant mentioned that doctors are already practising personalized medicine to some extent when they ask your family history. That gives them insight about your particular set of genes so they can help narrow down the right drug for the right problem.
Paula Demasio, professor for the Centennial College biotechnology department, hopes the monthly biotechnology lecture series will engage the public and draw an interest in the subject. More lectures are planned that pertain to the biotechnology field, but Demasio promises a variety of guest speakers.
The next lecture is scheduled to take place on February 24 between 7-8 p.m. at the HP campus, located at 755 Morningside Ave. More info will be available later on the CCSAI website.
