Imagine going to your doctor with a shortness of breath and she diagnoses asthma but promptly reassures you that she can do a quick DNA test to find out just which drug will offer the most effective treatment. It may seem like a scene from the sick bay of USS Voyager but the day when medicine will avail of a patient's genetic make-up, their predisposition to a particular disease and their likely response to a particular drug or treatment isn't that far away.
In fact, the science of genomics is already well advanced and Leeside has just become home to Ireland's first indigenous genomics company, HiberGen, at the newly-opened Cork Airport Business Park.
Genomics is the study of genes in a person's chromosomes and already HiberGen has entered into collaborative research programmes with some of Ireland's top medical professionals to discover the genes associated with a range of diseases.
The HiberGen team is led by chief executive officer Dr Maurice Treacy, from Wexford and chief scientific officer Dr Pat Vaughan, from Macroom in mid-Cork, who explained just what genomics entails.
"Research has shown that many common diseases such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and depression, as well as cardiovascular diseases and diseases of the immune system, have a genetic component," he said. "What we in HiberGen are doing is focusing on human healthcare and studying such genes known as disease genes with a view to developing a clearer understanding of disease so as to facilitate new approaches to diagnosis and treatment." Genomics companies like HiberGen work closely with the pharmaceutical sector, carrying out research to assess genetic predisposition to disease and to establish just how disease genes will respond to a particular drug treatment, he added.
Such research, an area of study known as pharmacogenomics, offers the potential to create drugs tailored to patients' genetic makeup, saving time and money now wasted on ineffective treatments as well as minimalising debilitating side effects.
Internationally, genomics is a rapidly expanding healthcare sector with leading companies like Millennium, Genset and Decode signing multi-million pound research contracts.
"It's a highly skilled area requiring people with innovative qualities," said Dr Vaughan, a biochemist who has done research work at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London and the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris.
"But people with those type of skills and qualifications are being produced by Irish universities and colleges. We expect to be employing 10 people within 12 months and we don't anticipate any problem recruiting them in Ireland.
"This type of work is already going on in Irish universities but on a much smaller scale, so the skills are there plus of course, with the Irish economy going so well, we'd also hope to attract back Irish graduates working abroad in genomics."