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Our discovery systems business generates the new knowledge that
feeds advances in diagnostics, protein
separations and our basic understanding of disease. These advances
are helping us identify the next steps towards personalised medicine
and bring genetic discoveries into clinical practice.
This fundamental change in healthcare is already happening. DNA
sequencing
instruments such as MegaBACE™ are now used to study BRCA1 and BRCA2
genes in women genetically predisposed to breast cancer.
 Investigating
the role of genetic variation in disease, microarrays
are being used to study patient populations to more accurately predict
the prognosis for individual patients.
Similarly, through understanding life at the molecular level, molecular
diagnostics in our pipeline show promise for detecting pulmonary
embolism, brain tumours and angiogenesis
with greater accuracy and sensitivity than is currently possible.
As we turn our imagination into reality, it’s no longer a question
of if personalised medicine will happen. It’s a question of how
quickly it will evolve.
Amersham’s long-term vision is to enable personalised medicine,
in which the diagnosis and treatment of disease will be tailored
to individuals based on their genetic makeup.
Our company is well positioned to play a key role in this development.
Personalised medicine will require increased understanding of the
role of genes, proteins and cellular processes in disease and how
these affect response to treatment – knowledge being enabled by
the discovery systems business area in Amersham Biosciences. It
will require molecular diagnostics that can detect disease before
symptoms show, and link diagnosis more closely to targeted therapeutics
– the kind of diagnostics being developed by Amersham Health. It
will require protein purification and bioprocess
systems – supplied by the protein separations business area of Amersham
Biosciences – for manufacturing the new biopharmaceutical
drugs and vaccines that will result from biomedical research.
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