PharmCAT poster to be presented at ASHG

At the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting in October, PharmGKB will be presenting the new Pharmacogenomics Clinical Annotation Tool (PharmCAT) with our colleague, Dr. Marylyn Ritchie, who is pictured on the home page of the meeting website (http://www.ashg.org/2016meeting/).  We look forward to seeing everyone there!

CPIC Meeting at ASCPT on March 15, 2017

The Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium(CPIC®)  Meeting will be held on March 15, 2017, in conjunction with the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) on March 15-18, 2017 (Washington, DC).

The one-day symposium is organized by the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC®) (cpicpgx.org) as part of the Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) (www.pgrn.org).   The CPIC-PGRN Meeting is open to all and features presentations from a world-class group of speakers who will describe current examples of implementation of pharmacogenomics in the clinic. There will also be panel discussions to summarize topics and encourage audience participation. Presentations will include “best cases” as well as challenging cases for implementation, and will include international perspectives on clinical use of pharmacogenomics.  More details can be found at https://cpicpgx.org/meetings/

CPIC® is one of the enabling resources funded by the National Institutes of Health as part of the PGRN, and is a shared project between PharmGKB (www.pharmgkb.org) and the PGRN.  The mission of the PGRN is to catalyze and lead research in precision medicine for the discovery and translation of genomic variation influencing therapeutic and adverse drug effects. CPIC’s goal is to facilitate translation by overcoming some of the barriers to implementation of pharmacogenetic tests into clinical practice. Over 150 CPIC members from 19 countries participate to developing tools to facilitate clinical implementation of pharmacogenetics, primarily by developing freely available, peer-reviewed, updatable, and detailed gene/drug clinical practice guidelines.

CPIC Seeks Feedback on Recommendation Strength and Gene/Drug Pair Level Definitions

CPIC is proposing changes to CPIC Guideline grades for strength of recommendation and for definitions of CPIC Levels of gene/drug pairs. 

Based on a review of other practices and challenges presented by some CPIC gene/drug pairs, it is recommended that the option "no recommendation" be added to the three current recommendation strengths for diplotype/drugs: strong, moderate, optional. To reflect this additional prescribing recommendation category, the definition of a CPIC level C has been revised to include cases where there are few published studies or mostly weak evidence and the clinical actions are unclear.

Additionally, CPIC would like to assign a level (A, B, C or D) to drugs that are listed in CPIC guidelines as “not good alternatives” but are not explicitly the subject of a CPIC guideline recommendation (e.g. the codeine guideline recommends not using tramadol as an alternative). Also, some guidelines include recommendations that may be reasonably applied to similar agents (e.g. imipramine treated like other TCAs). By slightly revising the definition of an “optional” recommendation to include cases where the “evidence is weak or based on extrapolations,” some of these alternative drugs can be assigned a CPIC level B or C, depending on levels of evidence.

The proposed changes are found at the CPIC website and are open for comment.  Please send comments to cpic@pharmgkb.org by September 12, 2016.