NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Right Patient Right Drug (RPRD) Diagnostics announced today it has agreed to perform preemptive, comprehensive clinical pharmacogenetic testing for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's PG4KDS program.
RPRD will use the pharmacogenomic genotyping platform PharmacoScan from Thermo Fisher Scientific. Launched in 2016, PharmacoScan can examine more than 4,600 markers in nearly 1,200 genes with a single assay. RPRD's pharmacogenetics testing improves on traditional testing that only screens a limited set of genes.
Under the PG4KDS program, St. Jude patients are eligible to receive detailed pharmacogenetic testing, usually at the beginning of their treatment. Clinicians enter the results into the patient's electronic medical records, allowing them to use the information when choosing and dosing a drug for treatment.
RPRD was spun out of the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2016 to provide clinical pharmacogenomic testing services, beginning with an array-based test based on Thermo Fisher's PharmacoScan technology. The company said it aims to roll out more targeted genotyping panels, as well as its own next-generation sequencing-based PGx test, in the future.
Collaborating with RPRD and using the PharmacScan platform will include "more of the genomic variants that are considered actionable for prescribing decisions based on Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines," Mary Relling, principal investigator of the PG4KDS program and chair of the pharmaceutical department at St. Jude, said in a statement.
"This means we will be able to provide guidance to our prescribers for more medications going forward."
In February, RPRD signed a similar agreement to help Children's Minnesota develop a pharmacogenomic testing process, using PharmacoScan within Children's Minnesota's cancer and blood disorder clinic and its neurology/psychology practice.