SAN FRANCISCO -- Hey baby, what's your genotype?
It could happen. Each of us has a "genotype" and a "phenotype."
Actually we have several. Genotype simply means our genetic makeup. Phenotype is the physical manifestation of genes, behavior and environment.
Don't worry if these words mean nothing to you now. In the next 20 years, researchers believe consumers will become increasingly familiar with their types.
Researchers gathered Monday at the Biotech & Infotech Summit to describe how they think genotyping and phenotyping will affect consumers and drug discovery.
Before we can actually understand our own types, biotech and drug companies are trying to sort it out. By analyzing genotypes and phenotypes in large populations, researchers hope to makes drugs safer and more effective. They basically hope to give the right drugs to the right people.
Although researchers know that genes alone don't dictate all disease and behavior, genes are a good place to start looking for red flags in post-Human Genome Project times.
Finding individual genes or gene variations responsible for disease is easier than figuring out what combination of genes, environment and behavior made you the way you are.
DNA Sciences, for example, has initiated a large genotyping effort. They began a project they call the GeneTrust in August 2000 to collect the DNA of anyone who would agree to donate.
Dr. Hugh Reinhoff, chairman and CEO of DNA Sciences, said he believes that identifying susceptibilities in individuals according to their genes will be a boon for consumers as well as business.
By recruiting people through their website, company researchers are taking genetic samples and grouping them appropriately for clinical trials.
If researchers have data showing that people with a particular genotype react poorly to the drug they're testing, they can exclude those individuals from their study.
The drug would then get through trials faster and cheaper. And when it got to market, people who know their genotypes would have a better idea which drugs will work for them.
But Gordon Ringold, chairman and CEO of SurroMed, believes there will soon be a "revolution in phenotyping."
Soon, researchers will need to ask not only what genes did you inherit, but what did you do and what did your environment do to put you in the state you're in?
The company has proprietary technologies that Ringold said can quickly examine thousands of parameters in biological samples. The researchers then associate these characteristics with the physiological states of patients participating in clinical trials.
Like DNA Sciences, SurroMed hopes to make clinical trials faster and more accurate.
Dr. Charles Wilson offered a completely new term: "nutrigenomics."
He might have seemed like a misfit, trying to fit in with the hip DNA crowd -- if you didn't know he was a world-renowned neurosurgeon, who invented a breakthrough brain surgery done through the nasal passages with no incisions necessary. He has performed over 3,000 of the surgeries. He is also director of the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Menlo Park, California.
What is nutrigenomics? It's a way to design what you eat to match your genes.
"It's just another 'omics,'" Wilson said.
But he proposes it as a simple way to eat according to your genotype or phenotype. For example, certain foods, such as oatmeal, have been shown to be good for you if you're at risk for heart disease.
As more phenotype and genotype information comes to light, so will the associations with what foods you should eat.
Obvious privacy concerns arise with collecting and disseminating genotypes and phenotypes.
Reinhoff showed a slide of the various protections that the company has put in place: DNA samples are kept in a locked and alarmed room with a video camera and motion detector that undergoes regular security checks.
Electronic information is stored on separate servers, distributed via a one-way drop from the Internet, immediately anonymized, password protected and encrypted.
The company's "guiding principles" even say company officials will "work for laws that protect individuals from discriminatory, inappropriate, or unfair use of information about their genetic makeup."
But privacy remains a worry, with no such laws yet in place in the United States and cases of abuse of genetic information recently reported.
