In the test tube, antisense compounds failed to enter the cells containing the target genes.
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And they were able to generate roughly 15 billion new strains, each with a different combination of changes in the target genes.
Firms like GeneSoft and Vicuron are taking things a step further, entering the earliest stages of human testing of drugs that target genes older antibiotics overlooked.
Developing newer medications which target these genes may potentially hold promise as well.
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"We can target and regulate genes inside any cell in any organism, " boasts Edward Lanphier, founder and chief executive of Sangamo.
Numerous drug firms are testing cancer drugs that target other growth-promoting genes.
Targeted cancer therapies are all the rage in the world of big pharma, but common cancers have so many defective genes they may prove impossible to target this way.
The result: understanding additional layers of the pathways these genes operate in and the drugs that target them.
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That makes it a promising drug target for Myriad, already well known for discovering genes linked to prostate, ovarian and breast cancers.
We wrote about the vaccine two years ago as an early example of new personalized cancer treatments moving through trials that will target only the patients whose tumors have the bad genes.
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Every tumor has five to ten flawed genes driving its growth, and researchers may have to target several simultaneously with cocktails of drugs, the approach that worked against AIDS. But finding such cocktails will be slow and difficult because regulators frown on testing two experimental drugs together, and corporate rivals rarely share drugs.
"Before you count genes, you really need to define what a gene is, " says Daniel Shoemaker , director of target discovery at Rosetta.
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