Personalized Medicine at Medco

In a recent press release, Medco Health Solutions announced that it is partnering with the FDA to study the applicability of personalized medicine methodologies to prescription drug treatment. Medco is the nation’s leading pharmacy benefit manager and the announcement signals the continued mainstreaming of pharmacogenomics in healthcare.

Medco and the FDA will jointly develop research projects, programs and strategies in the area of pharmacogenomics, the science of using a patient’s genotype to predict their response to drug treatments.

Medco’s objective is to advance pharmacy care and take some of the guesswork out of the prescription process. Specifically, the objectives of the program are to address:

Safety of prescription drugs
Physician participation in pharmacogenomic testing
Usefulness of tests in prescribing
Quantifying prescription information about drugs

Central to the research studies will be Medco’s extensive database of pharmacy claims. Medco is already involved with pharmacogenomic studies including Warfarin at the Mayo Clinic and tamoxifen with LabCorp.