Beyond clinical trials?

From The Atlantic

And with reliable simulations for what’s happening at the cellular level, this approach could be used to treat patients and also to test new drugs and devices. Dassault Systèmes is focusing on that level of granularity now, trying to simulate propagation of cholesterol in human cells and building oncological cell models. “It’s data science and modeling,” Charlès told me. “Coupling the two creates a new environment in medicine.”

Charlès and his colleagues believe that a shift to virtual clinical trials—that is, testing new medicines and devices using computer models before or instead of trials in human patients—could make new treatments available more quickly and cheaply. 

From pharmaceutical chemist Derek Lowe, in response

Speed the day. The cost of clinical trials, coupled with their low success rate, is eating us alive in this business (and it’s getting worse every year). This is just the sort of thing that could rescue us from the walls that are closing in more tightly all the time. But this talk of shifts and revolutions makes it sound as if this sort of thing is happening right now, which it isn’t. No such simulated clinical trial, one that could serve as the basis for a drug approval, is anywhere near even being proposed. How long before one is, then? If things go really swimmingly, I’d say 20 to 25 years from now, personally, but I’d be glad to hear other estimates.

We do, potentially, have the tools to use current treatments more effectively, and data science can help.  Even there,  the biggest opportunities are nothing to do with subtle individual differences — for example, both here and in the US, only about half of people with hypertension are being treated.