Going From Genome to Pill

摘要

Last week an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took an unprecedented step in recommending approval of a drug for a single racial group. The drug, a combination pill called BiDil that contains two heart-failure medications,had failed to help patients in the general population live longer. But in a clinical trial last year, BiDil decreased the risk of death among African Americans by 43%. That was sufficient evidence to convince the panel that BiDil should be approved to treat African-American patients with heart failure. FDA was widely expected to follow the recommendation this week.