The slow rate at which pharmacogenetic tests are being adopted in clinical practice is partly due to the lack of specific guidelines on how to adjust medications on the basis of the genetic test results. One of the goals of the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC) of the National Institutes of Health’s Pharmacogenomics Research Network (http://www.pgrn.org) and the Pharmacogenomics Knowledge Base (PharmGKB, http://www.pharmgkb.org) is to provide peer-reviewed, updated, evidence-based, freely accessible guidelines for gene/drug pairs. These guidelines will facilitate the translation of pharmacogenomic knowledge from bench to bedside.

https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1038/clpt.2010.279

CPIC: Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium of the Pharmacogenomics Research Network

Ed Lori B Andrews, Jane E Fullarton, Neil A Holtzman, Arno G Motulsky National Academy Press, £28.95, pp 338 ISBN 0-309-04798-6

Genetic screening tends to serve as a flypaper on which our hovering fears of a Brave New World alight and stick. In the future of all-conquering genetic technology, who should be screened for what and by whom? Here is a dense report, compiled by a committee of the great and the good, with hundreds of recommendations for action and inaction. How much …

Assessing Genetic Risks: Implications for Health and Social Policy

Despite scientific and clinical advances in the field of pharmacogenomics (PGx), application into routine care remains limited. Opportunely, several implementation studies and programs have been initiated over recent years. This article presents an overview of these studies and identifies current research gaps. Importantly, one such gap is the undetermined collective clinical utility of implementing a panel of PGx-markers into routine care, because the evidence base is currently limited to specific, individual drug-gene pairs. The Ubiquitous Pharmacogenomics (U-PGx) Consortium, which has been funded by the European Commission's Horizon-2020 program, aims to address this unmet need. In a prospective, block-randomized, controlled clinical study (PREemptive Pharmacogenomic testing for prevention of Adverse drug REactions [PREPARE]), pre-emptive genotyping of a panel of clinically relevant PGx-markers, for which guidelines are available, will be implemented across healthcare institutions in seven European countries. The impact on patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness will be investigated. The program is unique in its multicenter, multigene, multidrug, multi-ethnic, and multihealthcare system approach.

Implementing Pharmacogenomics in Europe: Design and Implementation Strategy of the Ubiquitous Pharmacogenomics Consortium

Implementing Pharmacogenomics in Europe: Design and Implementation Strategy of the Ubiquitous Pharmacogenomics Consortium (vol 101, pg 341, 2017)

Open innovation networks between academia and industry: an imperative for breakthrough therapies

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Scientific support about the concept of using molecular data for risk stratification and tailoring health-care interventions to the individual--a strategy broadly defined as molecular medicine (MM)--is accumulating. Molecular-based health-care technologies are beginning to enter clinical practice, but their use has revealed many scientific, economic, and organizational barriers to the effective delivery of targeted health care. We conducted a qualitative interview study to describe the MM landscape, with an emphasis on eliciting policy recommendations for the field from a broad range of stakeholders in MM and health care. Molecular medicine has widespread support but will require changes in how molecular-based technologies are evaluated, how health care is financed and delivered, and how clinicians and consumers are trained and prepared for its use. In particular, researchers and developers need to become active participants in a variety of clinical integration strategies to realize the promise of MM.

R J Carlson

Papers

Integrating molecular medicine into the US health-care system: opportunities, barriers, and policy challenges.