Mayo Clinic Receives $12.6 Million from NIH to Research Pharmacogenomics

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Mayo Clinic has been awarded a $12.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research in pharmacogenomics, the study of individualizing medicine based on a person's genomic makeup. The five-year grant will support research that is part of the Mayo Clinic Pharmacogenetics Research Network (PGRN), an integrated multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research effort. The funding specifically comes from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Cancer Institute.

"This award by the NIH will ensure that our research efforts will continue on a national scale, as we collaborate to find the best means to deliver accurate therapies and treatments to patients based on their individual genotype," says Richard Weinshilboum, M.D., Mayo pharmacogenomics researcher and director of the PGRN Research Program. This award follows the initial five-year grant that helped establish the national program.

The Mayo PGRN is based on a decades-long focus at Mayo on the study of pharmacogenomics of drug metabolizing enzymes. Activities of the Mayo PGRN Center are coordinated with other PGRN Centers across the country, including those at Indiana University and the University of California, San Francisco.

Specific Mayo Research

In addition to continuing their contributions to the national PGRN Pharmacogenomics Knowledge Base (PharmGKB) at Stanford University, Mayo researchers will continue to work on two specific areas under the grant. One focus is to explore the pharmacogenomics of the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole in patients with breast cancer, under the leadership of James Ingle, M.D., and Alex Adjei, M.D., Ph.D. The other is pharmacogenomic studies of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) escitalopram, which is important in treating depression. This project will be led by David Mrazek, M.D., chair of the Mayo Department of Psychiatry and Psychology.

The Pharmacogenetics Research Network is a nationwide collaboration of scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health to study how an individual's genes affect the way he or she responds to medicines. The goal of this research is to help tailor drug prescriptions to people's unique genetic makeups to help select the right drug at the right dose and to avoid adverse drug reactions.
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