However, since repairing a gene has been proven to be next to impossible, research on the gene has little to offer in terms of a potential drug. Genes that prevent people from getting disease would point more directly to drugs, he said. It seems simple, but it's not easy to change a hulking industry or the minds of biotech gurus who have their businesses aimed at studying disease genes. A target is any part of a cell that is found to be vulnerable to a drug. Lexicon is a company in The Woodlands, Texas, that has created a database of more than 100,000 so-called knockout mice, that is, mice with certain genes that are inactivated.
Researchers use the mice as models for drug experiments.
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