Uses for Genetics in Pharmacy

Pharmacogenetics is the use of genetic analysis to predict a patient’s response to drugs and drug efficacy and toxicity. It has been used for various purposes, including drug discovery and development, prescribing and personalised medicines. For the development of new drugs, it has a high failure rate in the early stage and therefore it can take 13-14 years to release a new drug into the market. However, pharmacogenetics can be used to identify potential responders or non-responders to a particular drug in an early stage, in order to reduce the rate of failure and cost. Additionally, a ‘predictive prescription genetic test’ is used as a prescribing guidance for some drugs. This helps prescribers to effectively identify drug effects on a patient. Personalised medicine is one of the benefits of using pharmacogenetics. Each patient has ‘personal pharmacogentic profile’ which can help prescribers to identify patient’s genotype then deliver ‘personalised’ drugs and additional health care.

The use of pharmacogentics is invaluable in medical professions. People can gain enormous benefit from the process, as it can predict drug effectiveness on a patient with a particular genotype and adverse drug reactions. However, non-genetic factors such as diet, lifestyle and other illness, play an essential role in the response of genes to drugs. Hence, a greater understanding of both genetic and non-genetic factors and their interactions are required and crucial.

Links:

original article, Uses for genetics in pharmacy, The Pharmaceutical Journal, 2006

http://www.pharmj.com/pdf/cpd/pj_20060722_genetics02.pdf