The last panel of the day (I missed a good part of one in between, unfortunately) is on the FDA's Critical Path initiative and personalized medicine in general. It's moderated by Greg Simon of FasterCures, and features Michelle Hoffman of Drug Discovery and Development, Robert McBurney of BG Medicine, Gualberto Ruaño of Genomas, John Swen of Pfizer, and Janet Woodcock of the FDA.

Hoffman makes the point that some of the hyper-sceptical reporting of drug and medical issues is a reaction to the genomics hype of a few years ago. (I know, some of you out there who've seen stories that were ripped right from an idiotic press release are wondering where this sceptical reporting is, but I think she's talking about, say, the New York Times.

McBurney spoke about his academic background, saying that he cares even more about data now than he did back then, since millions of dollars are riding on the results. He also mentions the genomic craze, using a good analogy - that a caterpillar and the corresponding butterfly have exactly the same genetic sequence. "I have the same genome I did when I was born," he said, "but some things have changed along the way". His company has recently signed a deal with the FDA to look at preclinical liver toxicity, wirh funding from several large drug companies.

Ruaño is speaking about reverse genomics, "bedside to bench" work for figuring out drug and tox mechanisms. He's summarizing a recent paper in Mol. Psych. on the metabolic effects of antipsychotic drugs - the weight gain and prediabetic symptoms seen in a subset of patients. He and his company did a large parallel search for DNA markers between the patient populations on the two ends of the weight-gain distribution. As it turned out, in olanzapine-treated patients, an ApoE marker was higher in the heavy group, and and ApoE4 one was higher in the lean. For risperidone-treated patients, the leptin receptor and the NPY5 receptor fit the same pattern. They're starting to use their markers prospectively to predict how new patients will respond.

That leads into John Swen's view from Pfizer. He makes the point right at first that he doesn't blame the media for the overhyping of new technologies, as opposed to the people promoting them. (He's got a point, although I'd share the blame out a bit more - compare Michelle Hoffman's view at the beginning of this post). His view of the Critical Path initiatives is that it's going to be long slog to get biomarkers and transitional medicine to work out - worth it, certainly, but not something that's going to start delivering in a short time frame. (No argument here!) He also thinks that we could be doing a lot better than we are in things like new clinical trial designs (which is interesting coming from a company that's run the first large published Bayesian clinical trial).

And finally, Woodcock of the FDA is being asked about how the whole Critical Path initiative is going to fare at its current level of funding. She also feels that the media are very cynical about the sorts of technologies that are being promoted, which corroborates the over-reaction theme. She also says that the parts of the scientific community that are "more vested in the reductionist model" are also pushing back a bit. (My take is that the minute something useful comes out of the whole personalized medicine field, most of the critics will shut up with great alacrity. Success has a thousand fathers, for sure, and nowhere more than in a drug company). She largely dodges the funding question, saying that's it not really the agency's job to lobby for funds, but says that the biggest obstacle she faces right now is getting enough reviewer time to evaluate proposals properly. She thinks that the single best use of the money, though, is personalized medicine (which I find a bit arguable at this point, but eventually she may well be right).