AstraZeneca has revealed a genetics research programme which will seek to develop a new range of drugs targeted at a range of diseases.
Drawing on the Innovative Genomics Initiative (University of California Berkeley and UC San Francisco) and the Broad Institute (Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the pharmaceutical giant will be utilising genetic scissors to “snip out” genes that cause diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and then develop drugs to target the conditions.
Based on research conducted 15 years ago where scientists decoded the human genome, AstraZeneca researchers will remove the DNA responsible for the condition from a patient, and then see which drugs can be used to target it.
Research in this area has previously been held up by the discovery that the diseases were actually the result of a combination of multiple genes, and that the technology to snip out genes has previously been both expensive and time consuming. However, the recent development of a technique known as Crispr has made it easier and cheaper to access the genetic material, and will be the focus of the programme.
Wellcome Trust and Thermo Fisher Scientific will also be part of the research group.
