Medicine Made to Match your
Genetic Profile
You say the antibiotic that cured your best friend’s bladder
infection made you break out in a fullbody rash? And the hormone
therapy they used to shrink your father’s prostate cancer
made it grow instead? And the only drug that ever helped your
irritable bowel syndrome was just taken off the market, because
five people died from its side effects?
 Don’t
blame the drug, says Wendell Weber, M.D., Ph.D., a medical geneticist
at the University of Michigan Medical School. The real problem
is likely to be your genes.
“Physicians and patients understand that genes influence
health and disease, but most don’t realize the harmful
effects pharmaceutical drugs can have on genetically susceptible
people,” explains Weber, a U-M professor emeritus of pharmacology.
“Genetic diversity is a major contributor to variations
in human drug response.”
A pioneer in the field of pharmacogenetics and author of a
definitive book by the same name, Weber has devoted his career
to studying how small genetic mutations called polymorphisms
can lead to big differences in how people respond to drugs or
environmental chemicals. The same drug that helps one individual
may have no effect on, or even harm, someone else.
 The
polymorphisms Weber studies can be as small as a one-for-one
substitution of amino acids in a gene made up of thousands of
amino acids. Like other genetic mutations, they are inherited
and can involve single or multiple genes. Polymorphisms are
associated with type one diabetes, a serious heart condition
called long QT syndrome, susceptibility to asthma, a bleeding
disorder called thrombophilia, and an inability to metabolize
common drugs like codeine, beta-blockers and antidepressants,
which can result in dangerous overdoses.
As the Human Genome Project nears completion, pharmacogenetics
is getting a lot of attention, because it could make it possible
for physicians to prescribe safer and more effective drugs and
therapies tailored to each patient’s unique genetic code.
—Sally Pobojewski
For more information on Weber and his work, visit
http://www.med.umich.edu/pharm/weber.html
 
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