More than 250 scientists from all over the world met from October 4th to October 7th in Catania, Italy this year for the 4th Annual Conference of the European Society of Personalized Therapy (ESPT). The conference focused on the progress and applications of pharmacogenomics in oncology, neurodegenerative disease, psychiatry, hemato-oncology, cardiovascular drugs and diabetes, and the application of cell-free DNA analysis as an innovative biomarker to guide lung and/or prostate cancer therapy.
Altogether, 94 posters were presented and discussed. For the first time, De Gruyter, the Publisher of Drug Metabolism and Personalized Therapy (DMPT), sponsored the winner of the poster award. The winner of the award was Swarup A.V. Shah, PhD, a Senior Molecular Scientist in human genetics in the Department of Biochemistry of the P.D. Hinduja National Hospital & Medical Research Centre in Mumbai, India.
Dr. Swarup Shah presented his research on a newer genetic biomarker NUDT15 and its role in predicting thiopurine-induced toxicity in Indian patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Dr. Shah observed that the presence of NUDT15 C415T genetic variant was extremely significant to the risk of developing thiopurine-induced toxicity. Further, the NUDT15 variant was found to be clinically more relevant than TPMT variants in terms of sensitivity and specificity, and also revealed a statistically significant difference in thiopurine dose requirement for patients with the NUDT15 variant. Dr. Shah’s findings indicate that a preemptive NUDT15 genotyping approach for thiopurine therapy should be adopted to effectively manage patients on thiopurine therapy and therefore minimize the incidences of thiopurine-induced toxicity.
We congratulate Dr. Shah for his outstanding poster and the award. Dr. Shah won a 1-year free online subscription to DMPT and a monetary prize.
©2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
