Personalizing Medicine Using Pharmaco-Metabonomics

The wordsmiths are at it again. Today’s new word is pharmaco-metabonomics – personalized medicine that takes into account how environmental factors interact with the unique way each person metabolizes drugs. Metabonomics is also known as metabolomics (both are impossible to pronounce). The combination of pharmaco-metabonomics and pharmacogenomics should make it possible to develop the ultimate personalized medicine.

Dr. Philippa Brice of the Public Health Genetics Unit:

The authors of this paper imply that a widespread belief in the utility of genotypic factors in the assessment of probable drug responses, without consideration of environmental factors, exists; this seems unlikely, as every clinician is well aware of the necessity to consider comorbidities, comedications and other relevant issues when prescribing a drug regime. This aside, this study adds to a growing body of evidence that metabonomics may well have value in the pursuit of individualised treatments. As with pharmacogenomic profiling, for general use it would be necessary to have full profiles performed and the information stored well in advance of that data being required, however, since in general it is not practical to delay the prescription of a drug until such an analysis has been completed.

Basically, the more information you have on people, the better.

*A definition of the suffix -omics can be found in the Saturday Genetics Quiz #12.

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