On April 7, 2016 I spoke with Joe Menetski of the Foundation of NIH (FNIH). We had a very good discussion about an exciting idea that you will hear more about in the upcoming months. Joe has been with the FNIH for several months. Prior to that he worked for several pharmaceutical companies for over 20 years. He said that the first question that these companies ask when developing a new medication is how do doctors diagnosis the condition.
On April 8, I spoke to Dr. Katrina Gwinn of NINDS and brought this up with her. To do a better job of diagnosing ET, she feels that there needs to be a better job of grouping patients – that share a number of things in common. To do so, she mentioned using blood tests & possibly imaging. She feels that biomarkers will be very important in this (see the announcement for the most recent biomarker study).
Coincidentally later that day, she was going to have a discussion with Trequant (see our post regarding their “watch”). The findings from the “watch” could be another means of collecting data leading to better groupings.
