Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton announced the completion of the first draft of the human genome – and the promised benefits to medicine are yet to be seen.

Biologists love it, but the primary goal of the US$3 billion Human Genome Project – rooting out the genetic roots of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, and then curing them – is still distant. After a decade of hard work, geneticists have arrived almost where they started. 

The limitations of genomic medicine are exemplified by a recent test of genetic indicators for heart disease. A study at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston collected 101 genetic variants statistically linked to heart disease in various studies, but the variants failed to predict the onset of disease in 19,000 women who were followed for 12 years.

Dr Nina P. Paynter, who led the study, reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association this February that taking a family history of medical conditions was a better guide.

The pharmaceutical industry has spent billions of dollars in search of genomic secrets and started bringing various genome-guided drugs to the market. While companies are still pouring huge quantities of money into this research, it has become increasingly clear that the genetics of most diseases are far more complicated than anticipated. Some argue that many more years of research will be required for new treatments to be able to transform medicine. 

“Genomics is a way to do science, not medicine,” said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and soon-to-be director of the National Cancer Institute. The Human Genome Project sought to sequence, or identify, all three billion chemical units of human DNA, finding the genetic roots of disease and then developing treatments. ~ New York Times, Jun 13