The possibility of offering each patient the most appropriate diagnosis and treatment, according to his or her genetic traits, is no longer a chimera but a reality. Much of the blame for the growing establishment of a more personalized medicine is due to the progress made in recent years in Pharmacogenetics, a science that deals mainly with the relationship between genetic polymorphism and individual response to drugs and that allows explaining the different responses of patients to the same doses of medication.

More than a hundred of the most outstanding Spanish experts in the field of basic research and the clinical application of pharmacogenetic knowledge will meet quotation on September 2 and 3 in Pamplona, during the celebration of the IV National congress of the Spanish Society of Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (SEFF). (SEFF). The meeting, which will take place at the auditorium of the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra, has the support of important public and private institutions and is carried out with the partnership of high school Roche, among other entities.

The knowledge of the human genome sequence and genetic variations between individuals is favoring the development of a more individualized medicine. The daily advances in the identification of biological markers and in the development of molecular diagnostic methods allow the design of treatments in accordance with the genetic profile of each patient and lead to more effective and safer drugs. However, the effective application of pharmacogenetics requires improving the training of professionals to identify patients and situations that can benefit from genetic analysis and for the correct interpretation of the results that the analyses can provide.

An exceptional program

In general, advances in pharmacogenetics are considered to substantially improve the quality of pharmacological therapeutics, especially in some areas such as infectious diseases, psychiatric diseases and cancer. In order to highlight these advances and review their clinical implications in some of these diseases, a complete and attractive scientific program has been put together. 

Director The individualization of treatment in oncology patients will be the main argument of the opening session, introduced by Dr. Jaime del Barrio, General Manager of high school Roche, and which will feature contributions from a world authority in this field. Dr. Anieta M. Sieuwerts, from department Translational Cancer Genomics and Proteomics at the Josephine Nefkens Institute Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdamm (The Netherlands), will highlight the advances in the search for new biomarkers. María Nieto Gutiérrez, from the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) assessment , will speak on the impact of personalized medicine on the regulatory and approval systems for new diagnostic and therapeutic resources.

In recent years a scenario has already been reached in which pharmacogenetics is shaping a completely different therapeutic and healthcare map, which will change the way in which drugs are selected and dosed, will help to find out which patients respond best to a therapy and will force individualized prescriptions to be made. In this sense, argues Dr. Jaime del Barrio, "the best example that can be followed is that of oncological research , where in the last few years alone more than 50% of the drugs approved are targeted therapies"; in addition, he points out, "the process of identifying biomarkers, as well as development and the application of programs of study genetics, has been speeded up and made extraordinarily cheap".