Eight Drugs a Week, Episode 13 – Pharmacogenetics: Here, There and Everywhere

Pharmacogenetics now surrounds us and is an efficient tool to prevent disease or to guide drug therapy. By studying polymorphisms in the genes coding for metabolism enzymes and drug transporters, we can have clues to help choose the right drug or adjust drug dosage. Not to mention that pharmacogenetics is the ideal companion for therapeutic drug monitoring for a comprehensive treatment optimization. Treatment failure and adverse drug reactions may, at least partly, be explained with pharmacogenetics and we have never been so close to large-scale implementation of this strategy.
 
In this episode, the Chair and Vice-Chair of the IATDMCT pharmacogenetic scientific committee will give us an overview of everything you need to know on pharmacogenetics.
 

In this episode we’ll hear about:

• How pharmacogenetics can be used to secure drug use in the field of oncology
• Some other applications where gene polymorphisms are of particular interest: for example, to manage the antiplatelet effect of clopidogrel or to ensure an appropriate use of voriconazole.
• The interest of pharmacogenetic panels for primary care and the key study raising the level of evidence for the approach.
• The gap that still needs to be closed from a multiplexed approach with a few studied genes to the thousands required to fully explain drug variability.
• The win-win combination of pharmacogenetics with TDM (like a good Len-Mac song) for patient care.

About our guests:

Erika is director of the Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology Unit of the Aviano Oncology Referral Centre, and contract professor at the School of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Trieste, Italy.
 
Jesse is a professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacogenetics, and Chair of the Laboratory of the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Toxicology, at the Leiden University Medical Center, in the Netherlands.
 

Subscribe to Eight Drugs a Week on your preferred podcast platform, including: