Since its completion, scientists have used information gained from the HGP in fields from molecular medicine to evolutionary biology.
A recently awarded patent highlights the profound advances in medicine that are only possible because of the wealth of information contained within the HGP’s results.
Parabon Nanolabs has recently received a joint grant awarded by the National Science Foundation for the development and testing of a drug to treat prostate cancer. Unlike other treatments for diseases, Parabon’s technique relies on an insightful understanding of human DNA coupled with a nanoscale printing technique.
According to Steven Armentrout, co-developer of Parabon’s technology, “We can now 'print,' molecule by molecule, exactly the compound that we want… What differentiates our nanotechnology from others is our ability to rapidly, and precisely, specify the placement of every atom in a compound that we design.”
Parabon’s technology, named the Essemblix™ Drug Development Platform, assembles programmable synthetic DNA strands that can be configured to represent any combination of the four bases that make up DNA (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine). Parabon further describes the process, “Because complementary sequences of DNA are mutually attractive, synthetic strands can be “programmed” with sequences that cause them to “swim to the right spot,” with respect to one another, and then bind to form nanostructures of virtually any shape.” However, before the complementary base pairs are introduced, Parabon introduces molecular subcomponents to specific locations along the DNA strand.
To work on this molecular scale Parabon had to develop their inSēquio Sequence Design Studio software which allows their engineers to design and configure synthetic DNA sequences that contain therapeutic molecular subcomponents.
Hong Zhong, a senior research scientist at Parabon had this to say about the process “When designing a therapeutic compound, we combine knowledge of the cell receptors we are targeting or biological pathways we are trying to affect with an understanding of the linking chemistry that defines what is possible to assemble… It's a deliberate and methodical engineering process, which is quite different from most other drug development approaches in use today."
The DNA sequences that result in successful bonding can then be synthetized rapidly to create possible disease therapies which ordinarily could take years to discover.
Read More About this Novel Technology at Parabon