Published 28 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4443
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4443

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Nobel prize winner calls for preventive approach to fight epidemics and disease

John Zarocostas

1 Geneva

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A Nobel prize winner has called for a new approach in medicine that focuses on prevention rather than cure.

Luc Montagnier, a French virologist and the co-recipient of the 2008 Nobel prize for medicine, told a global forum on 26 October that this could be achieved by using innovative technologies and encouraging a drastic change in the mentality of the medical community and the drug industry.

Professor Montagnier, addressing delegates at the Biobridge 2009 regenerative medicine conference in Geneva, said that technologies, especially nanotechnologies, are being developed that can identify molecular events that precede the occurrence of clinical signs of disease. Fine DNA sequencing could detect genetic predispositions and predict the effect of drugs, he said.

The technologies being developed, he said, include ultrasensitive methods to detect pathological DNA sequences of either viral or bacterial origin.

Professor Montagnier mentioned a universal database of abnormal DNA sequences present in blood samples, . . . [Full text of this article]


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