The overall focus of medicine is a concept that has been highly structured for several decades. Many modern day physicians now offer personalized approaches to help fight their patient’s illness. New waves of alternative drugs have been able to effectively target patients with specific needs. Ultimately, these new “personalized drugs” can potentially pose a threat to the thousands of mainstream drugs available today. New DNA-based drugs focus on providing a more effective solution to overcoming and preventing rare diseases. These drugs are the new gene patch medicines.
Dr. Stephen B. Shrewsbury, MD
Dr. Stephen B. Shrewsbury, MD is the author of Defy Your DNA. One of Dr. Shrewsbury’s many goals in writing this book is to provide hope to those faced with a rare genetic disease. Throughout the book, he discusses the introduction of various “gene-patch” medicines. These gene patch therapies will be able to help thousands of Americans identify and prevent diseases before they become ill.
Defy Your DNA offers insight to how specialized drugs can patch up mistakes located in our DNA. The rare diseases that can be adverted include Muscular Dystrophy and Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is reported that these medications will also be able to tackle cancer, asthma and high cholesterol. Shrewsbury is paving the way for a more direct and targeted approach to becoming familiar with your DNA as well as offering a solution to health issues that were previously recognized as terminal.
Defy Your DNA
Shrewsbury has dedicated the book to those who have previously participated in a drug study of some sort. He recognizes that without these brave individuals, new drugs or advances in pharmaceuticals would not be possible. Defy Your DNA begins by discussing the evolution of medicine and where it stands now. Dr. Shrewsbury makes note of how generalized medicine has shifted into a more personal approach.
One of the most interesting chapters would have to be “New Drugs for Bad Bugs” which further explains how new medicines will block harmful viruses. Today, Dr. Shrewsbury has established Shrewd Consulting LLC which encourages and advises biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies who also seek to develop new drugs which will combat genetic disorders.
New Gene Patch Medicines
Three main ways on how gene patches will revolutionize medicine, include:
- They are designed reproducibly and are incredibly accurate, to patch a tiny piece including 30 letters of the human genome’s 3 billion letters. Once the sequences of those letters have been determined, the gene patches can be built quickly.
- Gene patch medication can target various parts of the human genome. It can prevent and counter rare diseases that are treated poorly or not at all by today’s sophisticated medicines.
- Once the FDA has gained experience with some of these gene patches, companies developing new ones will use the same basic backbone chemistry, which will allow faster development and path to approval for a wide range of new drugs. This will ensure more medicine is readily available to treat more people; many with challenging diseases who have been neglected until now.
“A number of these drugs currently in research could be submitted to the FDA for final approval in the next year” says Shrewsbury. “A big benefit with this new type of medicine is that the early phase of drug development before clinical trials start takes less time, in some cases, days instead of years. These medications will literally revolutionize healthcare.”