Over 95% of the general population carries at least one genetic variants that is responsible for altered drug metabolism. Many of these individuals will encounter drugs for which they will need a different dose at some point in their lives. In the Netherlands we are amongst the world leaders in this topic and were the first country to establish national guidelines on pharmacogenomics. Hence, pharmacogenomics is already standard clinical practice for several drugs and genes in the Netherlands. However, due to the complexity of the genes involved in drug response and the high number of variants within these genes there is still a lot to uncover.
During this talk the background of pharmacogenomics will be explained as well as what we can currently do to apply this knowledge in clinical practice. Moreover, the rise of new technologies in the field of genetics and computational approaches will be discussed in the light of pharmacogenomics.
Speaker: Dr. Maaike van der Lee, LUMC