Pharmacogenetics News and Research

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The terms pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics are often used interchangeably to describe a field of research focused on how genes affect individual responses to medicines. Whether a medicine works well for you—or whether it causes serious side effects—depends, to a certain extent, on your genes.

Just as genes contribute to whether you will be tall or short, black-haired or blond, your genes also determine how you will respond to medicines. Genes are like recipes—they carry instructions for making protein molecules. As medicines travel through your body, they interact with thousands of proteins. Small differences in the composition or quantities of these molecules can affect how medicines do their jobs.

These differences can be due to diet, level of activity, or the medicines a person takes, but they can also be due to differences in genes. By understanding the genetic basis of drug responses, scientists hope to enable doctors to prescribe the drugs and doses best suited for each individual.

FDA permits marketing of 23andme Personal Genome Service Pharmacogenetic Reports test

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration permitted marketing, with special controls, of the 23andme Personal Genome Service Pharmacogenetic Reports test as a direct-to-consumer test for providing information about genetic variants that may be associated with a patient's ability to metabolize some medications to help inform discussions with a health care provider.

1 Nov 2018

Beyond BRCA: Epigenetic Silencing in Breast Cancer

An interview with Professor William Newman, discussing his recent discovery in the field of breast cancer research, and the options that this will provide for women who have a family history of breast cancer but test negative for BRCA1/2 mutations.

8 Oct 2018

Study highlights need for population-specific precision medicine programs in Latin America

Drug safety and effectiveness vary greatly among populations worldwide. Genetics is one of the factors that contribute to variability in drug response.

3 Oct 2018

Easy and inexpensive test could one day help guide epilepsy treatment

An easy and inexpensive test for the HLA-B*15:02 allele could one day allow clinicians to quickly identify which epilepsy patients are at risk of carbamazepine hypersensitivity, according to study results presented by Gita V. Soraya at ILAE's 2018 Asian & Oceanian Epilepsy Congress in Bali.

4 Sep 2018

Genetic variant discovery could improve safety, effectiveness of drugs for asthma and COPD

Research from the University of Liverpool, published today in Lancet Respiratory Medicine, identifies a genetic variant that could improve the safety and effectiveness of corticosteroids, drugs that are used to treat a range of common and rare conditions including asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

16 Mar 2018

Medical University of Vienna to partner with bio.logis GIM in pharmacogenetics

Within the framework of U-PGx, an EU project for promoting the use of pharmacogenetic insights in healthcare, the Medical University of Vienna will implement the Genetic Information Management Suite developed by bio.logis Genetic Information Management GmbH.

14 Mar 2018

New clinical practice guideline for using CYP2D6 genotype to guide tamoxifen therapy

An international group of clinicians and scientists representing the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium published the first-ever clinical practice guideline for using CYP2D6 genotype to guide tamoxifen therapy in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

1 Feb 2018

Medicare fails to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in lab overcharges

Five years ago, Companion DX Reference Lab hoped to cash in on cutting-edge genetic tests paid for by Medicare.

15 Dec 2017

MTSA expands efforts to fight against national opioid epidemic

Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia announced it is expanding efforts to educate Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists on treatment options that reduce or eliminate the need for opioids during and after surgery.

13 Oct 2017

Preclinical study demonstrates efficacy of gene therapy in treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Researchers from Genethon, the AFM-Telethon laboratory, Inserm (UMR 1089, Nantes) and the University of London (Royal Holloway) demonstrated the efficacy of an innovative gene therapy in the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

25 Jul 2017

LimTox online software tool provides information on drug hepatotoxicity

The Biological Text Mining Unit presents in a recent Nucleic Acids Research paper the LimTox online software tool developed at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre.

1 Jun 2017

Study identifies potential link between genes and treatment response in children with CAE

Consider two children who have childhood absence epilepsy (CAE), the most common form of pediatric epilepsy. They both take the same drug--one child sees an improvement in their seizures, but the other does not.

11 Apr 2017

Alzheimer's drug prescribed off-label could accelerate cognitive decline for some patients

Donepezil, a medication that is approved to treat people with Alzheimer's disease, should not be prescribed for people with mild cognitive impairment without a genetic test.

24 Feb 2017

Researchers develop new tool to help avoid adverse reactions to drugs

Researchers at the University of Liverpool, Alder Hey, University of Central Lancashire and University College London have developed a new tool to help avoid adverse reactions to medicines.

22 Feb 2017

New TSRI study sheds light on how the brain stores memories

A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) sheds light on how the brain stores memories.

4 Jan 2017

Professor David Goldstein appointed as chief adviser for AstraZeneca’s genomics initiative

AstraZeneca today announced that Professor David Goldstein will join the Company in the consultative role of Chief Adviser, Genomics to lead its integrated genomics initiative, which was announced in April.

30 Sep 2016

UPMC uses simple gene test to personalize medications for patients undergoing heart catheterization

Patients who go to UPMC Presbyterian for heart catheterization and who receive a stent to treat clogged arteries are now being screened with a simple blood test to determine if they have a gene variant that makes them less likely to respond to a blood-thinning medication commonly prescribed after the procedure.

11 Feb 2016

Many gene variants affect person's response to medication

In recent decades much hope was based on the development of personalised drug treatments, in which genetic tests determine the choice and optimal dose of medication for each individual patient. However, the real breakthrough is still to be seen, and now researchers at Karolinska Institutet show in two separate scientific papers that many more gene variants affect how a person responds to medication than previously thought - and thus that today's analytical tools are too coarse.

16 Dec 2015

Study reveals why anti-hormone therapy tamoxifen works better in some women than others

The anti-hormone therapy tamoxifen can reduce breast cancer recurrence by about half in women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer. But it works better in some women than others. Researchers are not sure why.

11 Dec 2015

Agena Bioscience releases Chip prep module to automate sample handling after PCR for MassARRAY System

Agena Bioscience today introduced the Chip prep module to automate sample handling after PCR for the MassARRAY 96-well System. This enables laboratories to operate the MassARRAY System largely unattended for high-throughput, multiplex genetic analysis.

24 Aug 2015