Roche with first ever 'gene chip'
Source: CNN
The era of personalized medicine has come a step closer as Switzerland's Roche Holding AG launched the world's first "gene chip" for testing how individuals will react to drugs.
Today's medicines are a hit-and-miss affair, with different people reacting differently to the same treatments, leading to adverse side effects or no effect at all in some cases.
Roche, the world's largest diagnostics company, hopes to change that with its new Amplichip CYP450 test, which identifies small variations in two genes affecting drug response.
Known as CYP2D6 and CYP2C19, they play a key role in determining how individuals metabolize commonly prescribed drugs, including treatments for depression, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and hyperactivity.
The new test, which is being launched first in the United States, with Europe set to follow at the end of the year, marks the latest advance in the small but growing field of personalized medicine, or pharmacogenomics.
Some 10 percent of Caucasians and 20 percent of Asian populations metabolize drugs poorly, while a smaller proportion of people are ultra-fast.
