Health & Wellbeing
37
Also see:
Health & Wellbeing –
6.1
Drug safety, page 35
7.
Clinical trials and evidence synthesis,
page 41
Society & Culture –
5.2
Arts and health, page 173
Keywords
Pharmacogenomics, pharmacogenetics, personalised
medicine, drug safety, stratified medicine
Expertise
‘
Personalised medicine’, or pharmacogenetics, promises
to revolutionise the way serious illnesses are treated and
end the prescription of drugs on the basis of ‘one dose
fits all’. It allows medication to be tailored to our individual
genetic make-up in order to achieve maximum benefit for
the patient and minimal risk of side-effects.
New ethical, social and legal challenges, however, arise
from the need to increase the use of genomic data and
electronic medical records. An interdisciplinary approach,
which involves experts from across health, social
sciences, and the arts, is required to address the real
challenges posed by these new advances in treatment
and patient care.
The University plays a world-leading role in personalised
medicine research, hosting the UK’s first NHS Chair in
Pharmacogenetics. We work to develop new treatments
and methods of care to create a personalised approach
to healthcare, aimed at maximising the efficacy of
treatment in a cost-effective manner and improving
patient quality of life.
We have a world-leading programme in personalised
medicine with research ranging from biomarker
discovery through to the application and
implementation of pharmacogenetics in clinical
practice. We take a systematic approach to avert all the
translational gaps in delivering biomarkers into healthcare
and having an impact on public health.
Our multidisciplinary team is housed in the Wolfson
Centre for Personalised Medicine and has access to
state-of-the-art biobanking and genotyping technologies.
We have forged links with hospitals nationally and the
NIHR Medicines for Children Research Network to
recruit patients; the key to our studies is the possibility to
undertake deep phenotyping which allows us to have the
ability to link phenotype to genotype.
Our studies focus on drug development and responses
to treatments, including adverse drug reactions. This is
supported by work at the MRC Centre for Drug Safety
Science and the CR-UK Cancer Research Centre.
Capabilities and facilities
•
Biobanking: freezer system with integral
robotics operated via a laboratory information
management system
•
Genotyping – including a sequenom mass
array system
•
Next generation genomic sequencing technologies
•
Mass spectrometry, including capabilities for
proteomic studies and low molecular weight
quantification and characterisation
•
Systems approaches
•
Clinical trials methodologies, trial design
administration and execution, and patient
recruitment.
Relevant centres and groups
•
Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine
•
MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science
•
Centre for Genomic Research
•
MRC North West Hub for
Trials Methodology Research
•
CR-UK Cancer Research Centre
•
NIHR Medicines for Children Research Network.
6.2
Personalised medicine
