Each spring semester, the University of Houston’s Student College of Clinical Pharmacy (SCCP) P1 liaisons are in charge of organizing a professional development seminar. This year, Erin Anderson and Sama Rahimi organized and produced a seminar titled “Use of Pharmacogenomics for Specialized Treatment.” The goal of the seminar was to improve student knowledge of a topic not thoroughly covered in the college’s curriculum and introduce a growing field that helps improve patient outcomes. This 1-hour seminar covered the basics of pharmacogenomics, how it is being used to tailor patient care, barriers to its use, and how it will produce more efficacious outcomes for patients. To help create a seminar that comprehensively covered this topic, SCCP invited speakers from various backgrounds, each with impressive knowledge and unique experiences in the field of pharmacogenomics. One of the speakers was Alan Myers, Pharm.D., Ph.D., a pharmacology professor at UTHealth School of Dentistry and a member of the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC). CPIC is an international consortium consisting of individual volunteers and a dedicated staff whose main goal is to facilitate the use of pharmacogenetic tests for patient care. Myers began the seminar by speaking on the foundation of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics. After covering the CPIC guidelines, he discussed the importance of pharmacist involvement in pharmacogenomics, in addition to overcoming barriers to clinical implementation. Myer also delved into the expanding career opportunities in pharmacogenomics.
The next speaker was Emily Cicali, Pharm.D., BCPS, a clinical assistant professor in pharmacotherapy and translational research at the University of Florida and also a CPIC member. Cicali spoke about her expertise with germline variations in the outpatient setting. She also talked about the challenges she had experienced with pharmacogenomics, the different implementations she and others have done and are currently doing at the University of Florida consult clinic, and what they have learned from these implementations.
The last speaker was James Mault, M.D., FACS, a cardiothoracic surgeon and president and chief medical officer at CQuentia, a genomics and personalized medicine provider. Mault chose a broader approach to the topic, outlining how the use of data analysis in health care, such as data collected through wearable medical technology, is important in optimizing patient care and providing a platform for improved patient–health care provider communication. Mault’s company has developed a proprietary technology to collect and transmit patients’ daily vital data. Mault’s team then combines these data with the data collected from a patient’s genetic testing and, using them together, can suggest a better therapy that is specifically tailored to the patient. The students were able to test out the prototype while Mault explained how it worked, which sparked a lot of interest and curiosity in the crowd.
Feedback from the seminar was highly positive, with both pharmacy students and Ph.D. students in attendance. Students had a lot of questions about this new, exciting field during the Q&A. Their questions ranged from how they believe genetic data confidentiality will evolve to how genetic testing can be implemented efficiently in patient care to how much genetic testing each speaker has performed personally on themselves. Students left the seminar with a better understanding of a complex topic, with many expressing interest in pursuing the field. The positive comments about the seminar confirmed SCCP’s reputation for incorporating novel topics into annual clinical educational seminars that challenge students at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy to go beyond classroom lecture content.
Pictured left to right: Dr. Myers (Pharm.D., Ph.D.), Dr. Cicali (Pharm.D., BCPS), and Dr. Mault (M.D., FACS).
UHCOP SCCP Officers and the speakers.
Poster designed for the event