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.

AutoGenomics' Warfarin Panel

GenomicWeb News (sub required) reported on Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics' completion of an evaluation of AutoGenomics' Infiniti 2C9-VKORC1 assay; a genetic test to determine correct dosing for warfarin. This announcement has come on the heels of the FDA's approval of new labeling for warfarin suggesting that an individual's response to the drug is dependent upon their genetic makeup.

HPCGG is participating in a clinical trial entitled: Creating an Optimal Warfarin Nomogram Trial (CROWN) to incorporate both clinical and genetic information in determining the correct warfarin dosing.