3 ms·
Although something akin to this should occur, I think your post understates the computational enormity of the issue. Many diseases are not caused by single gen
by cprncus 13y ago
Although something akin to this should occur, I think your post understates the computational enormity of the issue. Many diseases are not caused by single genes or single environmental conditions, but interactions between dozens of genes and the environment, even epigenetic factors. Big Data (huge data) approaches will begin to chip away at the mountain, but even with Google's super powers, it's a ways off.
> (1) would improve therapies across the board for all major diseases at once
How? Unless if by "at once" you mean they would begin the era of using this approach on any disease. But surely each disease will have its own puzzle.
- drcode 13y agoRe: Computationally enormity: Well, I agree the computational enormity is a big problem, but certainly some biochemical pathways will be more amenable to this type of approach than others, and so it should be possible to make incremental progress by solving one puzzle at a time. Re: Using on any disease I agree having this sort of technology is not an immediate solution to each arbitrary disease. However, being able to accurately predict how different cells in a specific person's body behave to different drug cocktails would give doctors "super powers" that are almost unimaginable today. A doctor with a patient that has cholesterol plaques might say "If we give him these ten drugs in this dosage his T lymphocytes will aggressively attack the plaques in the LAD artery only, and the LAD arterial cells will increase division to reduce risk of subsequent aneurysm from autoimmune side-effects". If the accuracy of the computational model is good enough, it might be just as effective as the old "nanobots in the bloodstream" concept, but much easier to implement. In effect, the patient's own cells could function as the "nanobots" by reprogramming them