In June 2023, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) announced it will be the first drug safety regulator in the world to pilot its own genetic “biobank,” to better understand how a patient’s genetic makeup can impact the safety of their medicines.
“The Yellow Card biobank, which will contain genetic data and patient samples … forms part of a long-term vision for more personalised medicine approaches … [to] enable doctors to target prescriptions using rapid screening tests, so patients … receive the safest medication for them, based on their genetic makeup,” a press release said.
In February 2024, as a personalised medicine project, the MHRA began recruiting patients who have experienced excessive bleeding after taking blood thinners to establish whether they have any special genetic traits which predispose them to excessive bleeding.
It may sound exciting however, personalised genetic medicine is a step towards an era where drug use and experimentation on populations become the norm.
As Dr. Guy Hatchard notes, whilst most pharmaceutical drugs entail adverse reactions and unanticipated side effects, drugs that are tailored to genetic characteristics may potentially have even more serious consequences and long-term adverse outcomes. This is because genetic systems are involved in all the functions of the physiology, its organs, bio-molecular messaging and overall immunity.
Hellbound and Down 