Mike Williams, in Bioworld, on the popping of the genome bubble.
[The idea was that once] the new targets associated with a disease… were identified, it would be relatively easy to find active compounds and turn them into drugs … And voila – the pharma and biotech industries would be ever more productive… [But] it appears likely that much of the complexity of the human species is… in cellular events that lie beyond the genome, in the more complex epigenetic world… [T]he genome is now widely viewed as the ‘preloaded software’ of the cell…
[S]ome of the root causes of [pharma’s] productivity problems are being increasingly well-understood by industry outsiders, resulting in a perception that some of the sound bites from the Emperors running biopharma R&D reflect an absence of clothing. Optimistic declarations that a ‘golden age’ of drug discovery is with us have little basis in reality as the industry continues to consolidate and only contribute further to the ‘toxic mix of science of economics’ currently reflective of ‘an industry ripe for disruption.’