The director of the genetics service at the Hospital de Sant Pau, Montserrat Baiget, explained the latest developments of her research group in pharmacogenetics. It was on February 10 under the IDIBELL seminar series.

Starting from the premise that the future of medicine and new therapies involve applying genomics, the group led by Montserrat Baiget focuses on pharmacogenetics. “The differences in the sequence of DNA or RNA genes related to patient response to drugs should enable us to stratify patients into subpopulations according to who responds more or less effective, or who presents more or less toxicity to certain drugs” so “we do not give drugs to patients who may have adverse side effects and neither are effective for them.”

Baiget explained her research with CPT11/Irinotecan, a drug used for cancer of the colon that inhibits a particular enzyme (topoisomerase I), and it can cause serious side effects. “We conducted a trial in which we determine that individuals who have a genotype favorable genotype could manage more than double the currently recommended dose without suffer side effects and increasing drug efficacy. We have also seen that the unfavorable genotypes present serious side effects well below this recommended dose.”

On 2012 they will initiate a new clinical trial to determine at what dose, Irinotecan may be more effective for favorable genotypes.