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Charles Marwick

JAMA. 1998;280:871.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A NEW CLASS of therapeutic agents known as "antisense" drugs is likely to become available to physicians within the next few months. These drugs operate at the molecular level, interrupting the process by which disease-causing proteins are produced.

The first of these agents to be recommended for approval by an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fomivirsen, for use in the treatment of cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, a disease leading to blindness that mainly affects persons with AIDS. The drug is manufactured by Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc, Carlsbad, Calif. If approved, it will be marketed as Vitravene.

Antisense drugs, which have been in development for about a decade, use an approach in which a single-stranded oligonucleotide DNA analog binds to and inhibits the RNA copy of a gene. "Traditional drugs are designed to interact with protein molecules that support or cause disease. Antisense drugs are designed . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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