by Ben Tang

Created on: March 31, 2009

An undeniable YES. Today's new medicines are definitely safer and more effective than older medicine due to more stringent regulations imposed by The FDA ( Food and Drug Administration) and the advancement in the field of molecular biology.

Medical scientist in the past had to rely on observation of the studied drug instead of being able to predict the outcome via computer simulation. Drug discovery in the past was a serendipitous affair instead of understanding the complete mechanism of drug and disease interaction.

As far as safety is concerned, medicines in the past rely on animal and human testing to justify for its commercial usage in the mass public. As we now know, each human being has a different set of genetic blueprint and ethnicity do play a part in how a medicine respond to the disease. To put this case in point, from 1997-2000, 8 out of 10 medicine withdrawal in the US

was due to greater toxicity in women compared to man. Relying on a limited batch of test subjects to determine the effectiveness and safety of the medicine for the world population is not accurate.

With the advancement in technology and the unraveling of the human genome, new medicines of the future will be designed and tailored for individuals. For example, the recent discovery of HER-2 gene in breast cancer has proven the case of genomic medicine. Women who has the expression of HER-2 gene will respond better to the medicine; Herceptin than women who does not carry this gene. Oncologists utilize this known fact to order tests for their patients and selectively choose patients whose disease will respond to the therapy.

In the field of cancer treatment, the severity of the side effects differ with each individual. Some individuals experience less side effects while some do not respond to therapy as well as others. In the treatment of colorectal cancer, patients with the Thymidylate synthase gene experience less toxicity of chemotherapy with the drug 5-FU than those who lack the expression of this gene. In the medical fraternity, they refer to this condition as genetic polymorphism or basically a variety gene.

Medical technology will continue to improve along with medicine specificity in the treatment of disease. The more specific the treatment is for selected individuals, the less likelihood of side effects will occur. In time to come, new medicine will certainly be safer and the effectiveness will be accurately matched to the disease it intends to treat.

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