AN INGENIOUS trick that should reveal the side effects of drugs long before trials begin has been developed by a company in California.
The trick is to attach proteins to their genes. This provides a quick way of revealing which of the body’s proteins are likely to be caught in the chemical crossfire from a powerful new drug.
“Small-molecule drugs are far from being magic bullets,” says Bassil Dahiyat, the president of Xencor in Monrovia, California, which developed the technique. “You’re basically eating poison.”
Once human proteins have been tethered to the genes that made them, the protein-gene “combos” are…
