The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/95644
In 1994, Richard Resnick was a 22-year-old computer science grad looking for a job. He interviewed for a position writing software for public radio, but never received a callback. Eventually, he was offered DQRWKHU JLJ² RQH WKDW GLGQ¶W pay very well, but, out of options, he took it. 50 Fall 2012 µµ I WAS VERY FOCUSED RQ MXVW JHWWLQJ D MRE ŕ KH VD\V Ŕ6R , GLGQŒW UHDOL]H DW ƂUVW WKH JRRG fortune that just happened to me." As fate would have it, he had landed at MIT, and his boss was world-renowned biology professor Eric Lander, who had devot- ed his career to the study of the human genome. Resnick had ended up working within the beating heart of the Human Ge- nome Project, the international effort to sequence and identify all three billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. Lander would later be named one of TIMEŒV PRVW LQƃXHQ- tial people in the world. Decoding the human genome would be heralded as the key to the treatment of some of humankind's most virulent diseases. And there was Resnick, in the middle of it all, "completely and totally by happenstance," he says. Little did he realize that this MRE ZRXOG GHƂQH KLV FDUHHU IRU WKH QH[W WZR GHFDGHV ,W ZRXOG also put him at the very center of a tidal wave of change now sweeping through science and medicine as scientists grapple with the potential of gene sequencing to identify the genetic roots of disease and to treat those diseases with pinpoint ac- curacy. Now doctors can analyze any person's genes to discover myriad things about them, including whether they have a gene variation that might result in recurrent bouts of breast cancer or genetic diseases such as Usher syndrome, Pendred syndrome, F\VWLF ƂEURVLV RU VLFNOH FHOO DQHPLD DPRQJ KXQGUHGV RI RWKHUV Resnick, at 40, is the CEO of GenomeQuest, a small company on the cutting edge of developing large-scale genomic software applications. Thanks to companies like his, it is now easier, cheaper, and faster than ever for clinicians to sort through a patient's genes to home in on mutations. Armed with this knowledge, doctors can prescribe more effective and increas- ingly targeted treatments. And with a better understanding of WKH JHQH DOWHUDWLRQV FDXVLQJ IRU H[DPSOH FDQFHURXV WXPRUV WR JURZ GRFWRUV FDQ EHWWHU GHYHORS WKHUDSLHV WR VSHFLƂFDOO\ LQKLELW those mutations, thereby wiping out those tumors. Scientists are dizzy with the possibilities. But as Resnick is all too aware, the genetic revolution also poses some thorny questions. "I have this sort of cognitive dissonance about what we do," DGPLWV 5HVQLFN LQ KLV RIƂFH DW *HQRPH4XHVWŒV :HVWERURXJK headquarters. His manner is both easygoing and intense. "The genome can change people's lives in a really good way," he says. "Some drugs from pharmaceutical companies have made it pos- sible for people to live lives they otherwise wouldn't have been able to. But I think the model of capitalism applied to health care is disturbing. The only way the planet can carry this many people is if we stop having babies, which I don't think will hap- pen, or we keep making food grow in weirder and weirder places by using genetics. I'm just not really 100 percent on this side of the philosophy that says 'we have to keep growing and we have to live longer'."