Personalized Medical Care

The 1200 Patients Project aims to develop a new model for personalized medical care through preemptive pharmacogenomics.  Enrolled patients provide a single blood sample for analysis, which is genotyped by an in-house CLIA-certified laboratory.  Patients’ genetic information is compared to a database of well-substantiated pharmacogenomic research compiled by the 1200 Patients Project team, which is constantly updated to reflect the most current research available.  This database is used to determine whether it is likely that a patient will respond positively or negatively to a medication.  With patient permission, these results are delivered to enrolled physicians at the University of Chicago through an online portal, termed the Genomic Prescribing System (GPS).  The GPS is designed to be convenient to use, with clear and consistent images and wording, so that pharmacogenomic information can be easily integrated into clinicians’ workflow.  Ultimately, the GPS enables physicians to make patient-specific treatment decisions, improving patient outcomes.

Finding the Right Medication and Dose

Adverse reactions to medications are one of the leading causes of death in the United States and many patients take medications that are not effective for them.  The information distributed to providers in this study could allow them to identify which patients would experience negative side effects from medications, and to determine which medications would be the most effective for each patient.  Pharmacogenomic information can also be factored into dosing algorithms, so that the ideal dose for each patient can be most accurately determined, eliminating the trial-and-error process that is frequently required.

The link to the clinicaltrials.gov website for this study can be found here.