How does genomics result in better treatment?

Eric Green, MD, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains how DNA analysis can help scientists discover better ways of treating hypertension and other conditions.

Transcript

00:00

If we can sort of tease that out by knowing exactly what circuit is wrong--

00:06

something's turned up, something's turned down, something's not working-- that gives us clues about how to fix that.

00:12

[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:21

Understanding the DNA leads us to better understand what are the circuits that are affect--

00:28

the biological circuits that lead to this end product of hypertension. There's lots of ways you can make your blood pressure go--

00:36

lots of ways, lots of different circuits. But the broad category, hypertension, just means there's something wrong in some of the circuits.

00:43

If we can sort of tease that out by knowing exactly what circuit is wrong-- something's turned up, something's turned down,

00:51

something's not working-- that gives us clues about how to fix that. One way we can get those clues is by looking at the blueprint.

01:01

Your blueprint might say, you know what, this little circuit over here doesn't work so well in you. And as a result, you have to compensate.

01:07

And one of the ways you compensate is you have high blood pressure. That's very informative. That might mean we can design a drug that really works on that little circuit over there.

01:16

And in doing so, it'll work on you, but that same drug might work on anybody else that has that broken circuit.

01:22

That's the idea. [MUSIC PLAYING]