U.K. Health Minister Lord Warner recently announced the winning bids for £4 million of funding into pharmacogenetics — how a patient's genetic make-up can effect their response to different medicines.

Whilst research in this area is still in its early stages, it is hoped that eventually doctors will be able to use information about a patient's genes to predict how they might respond to different medicines and then tailor treatments to suit their individual needs.

This could help to reduce the incidence of adverse drug reactions by making sure that when a patient's genetic make-up means that they are likely to react badly to a medicine, alternative treatments are used. Likewise, doctors will be able to improve the effectiveness of some treatments by targeting those patients who are likely to respond well.

The six winning bids include research projects into how genetics could effect responses to drugs used to prevent blood clots and treat epilepsy as well as developing a screening test to identify patients who are at high risk of having a fatal reaction to general anaesthetic.

Lord Warner said: "I am delighted to announce the successful bidders for this funding. Whilst research in this area is still in its early stages, pharmacogenetics has enormous potential to improve the effectiveness of the treatment that patients receive, and more importantly could save lives by identifying those patients who, because of their genetic make-up, are likely to react badly to certain medicines.

This is part of the government's commitment to make sure that U.K. National Health Service patients get the full benefit of the latest developments in genetic knowledge".

The funding is part of a £50 million strategy announced in last year's Genetics White Paper.

The six successful bidders are:

• St James' University Hospital (Professor Phillip Hopkins) £589,711
  To develop a screening test for all patients requiring surgery under general anaesthesia, that will identify individuals at risk of developing malignant hyperthermia, a potentially fatal reaction to commonly used anaesthetic drugs.

• Salford Royal Hospital NHS (Professor William Ollier) £781,196
  Azathioprine is used to treat several inflammatory diseases. Its effectiveness is limited by a number of side effects. The research examines whether genetics are a factor in a patient having adverse reactions to this drug.

• University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Dr Ann Daly) £637,550
  Research will identify genetic factors involved in determining whether a patient is susceptible to liver injury as a result of taking penicillin and anti-turberculosis medicines.

• University of Liverpool (Professor Munir Pirmohamed) £842,192
  Warfarin is prescribed to prevent blood clotting and is used by 600,000 patients in the U.K. For some patients it can lead to bleeding and the research will look into whether genetics and environmental factors play a part in causing this.

• The Walton Center for Neurology and Neurosurgery (Professor David Chadwick) £776, 554
  Epilepsy affects 300,000 people in the UK each year. The project aims to improve the management of epilepsy by developing a test to predict a patient's response to the epilepsy drug, Clobazam.

• University College London (Dr Hugh Montgomery) £529,857
  Anthracyclines have dramatically improved cancer prognosis, but can cause severe heart damage. The risk is unpredictable for the individual. This project will follow children who had received this drug for leukaemia and childhood kidney cancer 10 years ago, as well as women needing treatment for breast cancer, whose hearts will be studied before and after treatment. The aim is to identify the genes that identify sensitivity to this heart damage and so that the drug dosage can be lowered where necessary, but allowing improvements in treatments for cancer in others.

  Source: U.K. Department of Health press release

  
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