Under the ‘Genomics innovation impact in health and economy’ forum Julio Frenk Mora, former Minister of Health in Mexico, said that genomic medicine is opening a new era to face health problems. The emergence of this branch, he said, represents a paradigm shift for the world, so that Mexico should not be left behind.
Genomic medicine began in 2005, the year in which the human genome was first codified. Through genomics, all the genetic information we inherit from our parents that is in the chromosomes of each of our cells is being understood. The genome has variations from one individual to another and that is exactly what specialists are studying, in order to identify health problems that a specific individual may develop.
Since then, research programs were promoted worldwide to find causes of various diseases, also for early and predictive disease diagnostics, plus for pharmacogenomics — personalized drugs for prevention and/or treatment.
This forum held at the National Academy of Medicine has as principal objective to establish a link between the academic research, performing extraordinary advances in genomics, and the business sector, responsible to market the genomic products.
Frenk Mora, who is also a dean at Harvard University, said the issue is of vital importance to the people, because they are the ones that constitute the field of public health. Although humans share more than 99% of our genetic material, each gene has tiny individual or group differences that explain, in large part, our peculiarities as individuals or special populations, including features linked to our strengths and weaknesses.
No so far ago, it was discovered a gene mutation responsible for a rare hereditary form of diabetes, which is common among Latin Americans. This mutation affects 2 percent of Mexicans, and although previous studies were performed to find risk factors associated with type 2 diabetes, most of them were found in genetic components of European populations.
This is an example of the importance of a national genomic research focusing in local genes, but “the importance of genomic medicine goes beyond health care; it has fundamental implications for the development of science and technology, as well for the economy through new products and services,” said Frenk.
PhD in Economics Pedro Aspe Armella said that if the investigation is not taken into the market the opportunity to create jobs and to support further economic growth will be lost. He said that at the beginning it will be difficult, as firstly is necessary to find funding coming from companies with capital and not from bank loans.
“In the public sector Conacyt finances projects in Mexico, another way is through family and friends, in the US almost 96% of successful businesses start in this way,” he said.
We also have angels investors, “in Mexico we have about 25 companies that are beginning to invest in scientific matters to bring them to market, they invest in the early stages, the riskier ones, and generally support with one to 20 million pesos.”
Establishing this link will create a compromise of bringing together diverse researchers developing solid projects and the entrepreneurs interested to fund their research, concluded Pedro Aspe Armella.
Through: El Economista, Infosalus.com
