Medical Learning and Teaching Unit

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Browsing Medical Learning and Teaching Unit by Author "Anderson, C."

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    Pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine: consumer perspectives, lessons learned in Australia and beyond
    (Bentham Science Publishers Ltd, 2012) Anderson, C.; Ward, H.; Corkindale, D.; Ward, M.; Sorich, M.; McKinnon, R.
    A decade after Francis Collins, then Director of the Human Genome Project, stated that: “Genetic prediction of individual risks of disease and responsiveness to drugs will reach the medical mainstream in the next decade or so” the uptake of therapeutic strategies informed by pharmacogenomic tests, often termed personalised medicine, has been limited. Several recent developments have been suggested as potential accelerating factors for the introduction of personalised medicine including the advent of commercially oriented pharmacogenomic testing and direct to consumer genetic testing. The advent of such testing has led to pharmacogenomic information becoming a commodity rather than simply medical information. Given this increasingly complex environment, the interpretation of pharmacogenomic testing has considerable implications for both health professionals and consumers. This paper asserts that both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors play a role for bringing pharmacogenomics tests to the clinic and public health practice. While scientists tended to concentrate on the ‘push’ factors, there has been relatively little discussion on the ‘pull’ factors such as consumer and enduser perspectives, let alone in developing countries and the Asia-Pacific region. This paper focuses on studies of consumer views concerning pharmacogenomics and discusses the implications of these views for health professionals including recent lessons learned in Australia and globally. Our review reflects a relative paucity of studies, a need for more widespread public consultation and education. It also highlights the need for a focus on educational strategies, possibly involving an increased role of pharmacists given their drug focus.
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    Reforming pharmaceutical education to enhance the global uptake of pharmacogenenomics and personalized medicine
    (Bentham Science Publishers Ltd, 2012) Dias, M.; Depala, K.; Ward, H.; Ward, M.; Sorich, M.; Anderson, C.; McKinnon, R.
    Personalized medicine has been defined as the tailoring of medical treatment based on individual patient characteristics. In practice, personalized medicine generally involves the stratifying of patient populations based on biomarkers, most frequently genetic in nature. This results in patient subpopulations likely to show differential responses to drug therapy in terms of efficacy and toxicity. While the potential for personalized medicine to positively impact on drug discovery and therapeutics has been widely hyped, clinical uptake has been markedly limited. Over the recent years, a number of potential barriers to the more widespread uptake of personalized medicine have been identified. These include technical, economic and social factors. One such barrier is the need for the significant up-skilling of health professionals in order to harness the potential of personalized medicine and ensure adequate information flow to consumers. Pharmacists are ideally positioned to be active participants in personalized medicine but to date, their role has been minimal. While the reasons are multifactorial, we argue that there is a clear need for significant reforming of current pharmacy curricula. Here we review progress in worldwide pharmaceutical education and practice relevant to global personalized medicine and public health pharmacogenomics and highlight salient points for future consideration.