Statistics show that from the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome only, there were more than 1,000 patients having allergic reaction to drugs in five years, causing a loss of 100 million baht to the state budgets.
The 2nd South East Asian Pharmacogenomics Research Network, which is co-organized by Ramathibodi Hospital, the Department of Medical Sciences, Mahidol University’s Faculty of Pharmacy, and Japan’s RIKEN Institute will be a gathering of leading researchers from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. It is scheduled for 15-16 January, 2013, and will be attended by executives from the Ministry of Science and Technology as well as researchers from the Pharmacogenomics Project.
Science and Technology Minister Worawat Ua-apinyakul said pharmacogenomics is a study about variation of human genetics that affects an individual’s response to medication. The knowledge is used for development of the lab tests, and for doctors’ references when deciding to adjust a personalized treatment plan. This is because a certain drug may be effective for some, but ineffective or even fatal for others.
Hence, this conference is a start of pharmacogenomics networking among South East Asian countries, giving participants an opportunity to listen and share their experiences, as well as to set framework for pharmacogenomics study to establish database on problematic drugs.
Dr Nares Damrongchai, Director of TCELS, said this will be the second conference and also a significant progress showing continuity of international cooperation towards this issue, which TCELS is determined to continually support until the science of pharmacogenomics becomes widespread and increasingly beneficial to the public.
Besides, personalized medicine is also a future of pharmaceutical business industry, for which the pharmaceutical sector should pay greater attention and start an investment from now on. It is a rapidly advanced innovation from the increasing knowledge since we can access the genome data of general human beings, at cheaper cost. Thus, common people will benefit more from the innovation, which means the client base is growing bigger than it was in the past, and TCELS is ready to support any Thai firms that are interested in investing on this area of business.
Prof Dr Wasan Chantratita, director of the Pharmacogenomics Project of Ramathibodi Hospital, said genomic medicine and personalized medicine are science of genetic study to locate the spots on genome that is a cause or contributing factor of diseases, and to use those located spots as an indicator of individual risk for getting diseases in the future, while seeking prevention and developing a laboratory test kit to locate the position quickly and accurately before the symptoms appear. This will allow for responsive treatment with pharmacogenomics being one of the special tools used for effective treatment of personalized medicine.
For Thailand, Prof Dr Wasan disclosed that the Health Product Vigilance Center of the Food and Drug Administration, Ministry of Public Health has received hospital reports about unpleasant symptoms from drug allergy in patients with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS). In a five-year period, about 1,192 cases were reported to have their skin and mucosa severely destroyed, and even have fatality risk after use of certain drugs. The treatments for each SJS patient cost around 100,000 baht, causing the loss of national budgets of 119,200,000 baht.
The above figures are only part of the data, as the reports on side-effects of medication from hospitals nationwide still have some limitation. Besides, the genetic differences between races may cause variation in drug responses, making pharmacogenomic testing necessary for certain groups of population.
According to the director of the Pharmacogenomic Project, many countries already have the National List of Essential Medicines to specify which drugs are necessary and accessible for the people. However, no matter the drugs are cheap or expensive, newly imported or being the old ones with expired patents, there is nothing to assure that the drugs which are effective and have no side-effects on certain groups of people will be effective for others.
Such problems make it necessary for developing countries to spend more budget on pharmacogenomic researches of essential medicines for their population. The information will be used for selection of drugs into the National List of Essential Medicines, based on the population genetics and economic status.
At the conference, the initiatives will be proposed on the use of pharmacogenomics to decide on the national list of essential medicines, as well as the new science of genomic medicine for personalized treatments that emphasize on disease genes.
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