The European Medicines Agency has released a concept paper on the development of a guideline on the evaluation of pharmacogenomic methodologies in the evaluation of authorised medicines for public consultation.

The Concept paper on key aspects for the use of pharmacogenomic methodologies in the pharmacovigilance evaluation of medicinal products explains that a proportion of the variability in response to medicines is due to genetic differences between individuals. Identifying individuals at risk of side effects, unexpected complications or lack of efficacy may help the development of strategies to optimise the use of medicines.

The concept paper sets out a number of issues that a future guideline could cover. These include the systematic consideration of the effects of genetic variability in safety monitoring of medicines, the use of biomarkers, the timing of the monitoring of genomic data and the information that should be provided in medicines' product information.

The concept paper is open for comments until 15 March 2012. Comments should be sent to pgwpsecretariat@ema.europa.eu using the .

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