Here’s a blog entry, over on the Research Ethics Blog, that ought to be of interest to people interested in biotech: A Tale of Two Cousins: Tragedy and the Clinical Trial

Recently the New York Times published a story about two cousins in the US, both with a lethal form of melanoma, who were also both enrolled into a Phase III Clinical Trial to test a new, breakthrough cancer drug. The drug, PLX4032, has been shown to radically reduce the size of solid tumours in specific kinds of cancers, including intractable melanoma, in recent previous trials….

This is of interest to the world of biotech because PLX4032 is aimed at cancers rooted in particular mutations. In fact, according to ThePharmaLetter, it is “the first in a new class of drugs specifically designed to target the abnormal molecular activity resulting from an individual genetic mutation…” (See also the Wikipedia page for PLX4032.)

So, the challenges presented by the PLX4032 clinical trial are ones the biotech industry — and regulators and ethics board — are only going to see more of.