Making sense of asthma

There is now a high probability that all the genes encoded in the human genome will have been sequenced by the year 2005, resulting in a massive increase in the identification of novel therapeutic targets. The use of new genomic sequence information in conjunction with antisense oligonucleotides is one means by which the gene products playing the most important roles in multifactorial diseases, such as asthma, can be identified. Subsequently, the antisense nucleotides themselves can be used as therapeutic agents, or drugs designed to control the activity of the relevant gene product.