Thermo Fisher Scientific and the University of Pittsburgh have established a new Pharmacogenomics Centre of Excellence that combines technology in genomics, bioinformatics, implementation science, medication-response phenotyping, and education.

The centre aims to discover and validate medication-response predictors in patients, overcome clinical implementation barriers, and demonstrate the value of pre-emptive pharmacogenomics testing in routine clinical practice. Strategically, it will focus on:

• Technologies to identify the genomic determinants of medication response and provide pharmacogenomics analysis and interpretation for researchers, clinicians, and patients
• Demonstrating the clinical utility and economic value of pharmacogenomics-based care in emerging healthcare delivery models at Pitt/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a nonprofit academic health system
• Developing effective methods for return of pharmacogenomics results to achieve clinician and patient education
• Advancing pharmacogenomics and technology awareness and adoption by providing leadership in technology translation through educational platforms, conferences, and hands-on workshops hosted by Pitt and Thermo Fisher to disseminate expertise and best practices nationally.

The new centre will feature Thermo Fisher’s portfolio of pharmacogenomics testing solutions, including its PharmacoScan platform, to study preemptive panel-based pharmacogenomics testing and return results in at least 150,000 patients in western and central Pennsylvania. The team expects that this high-density population screening of 4,627 markers within 1,191 genes will yield concise pharmacogenomics signatures that associate with known phenotypes within specific patient cohorts. The objective is to demonstrate that targeted testing can be deployed clinically at population scale using testing platforms that have been designed for greater speed and precision.

The new centre will use Pitt+Me Discovery, the new institutional bio-repository developed by the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute. It also extends the pharmacogenomics clinical implementation (PreCISE-Rx) and (Test2Learn) educational programs already implemented in Pittsburgh.