The 17th Golden Helix Pharmacogenomics Day was successfully organized in Rotterdam, the Netherlands on May 27th, 2016 by the Golden Helix Foundation and the Erasmus University Medical Center. Overall, the conference was attended by 164 participants from over 10 countries from Europe and the United States and was under the auspices of several national and international organizations, such as the Dutch Royal Pharmacists Association, the Genomic Medicine Alliance, the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry, and others.
The 1st session included lectures related to clinical implementation of Pharmacogenomics, featuring the keynote lecture by Prof. Julie Johnson (University of Florida, Tampa, FL, USA), followed by Prof. Markus Paulmichl (Paracelsus University, Salzburg, Austria), who provided an overview of the implementation of Pharmacogenomics in Austria and Prof. Magnus Ingelman-Sundberg (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden), who talked about sequencing of rare variants of pharmacogenomics interest. The 2nd session provided an overview of cases, as evidence for clinical use of pharmacogenomics, focusing onTPMT genotyping for thiopurine treatment (Dr. Marieke Coenen,Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands), DPYD genotyping (Dr. Linda Henricks, Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam, the Netherlands), tamoxifen and CYP2D6 genotyping (Prof. Matthias Schwabb, Margarete Fisher Bosch Institute, Stuttgart, Germany) and SLCO1B1 and statin pharmacogenomics (Prof. Mikko Niemi, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland). There were also lectures about evidence-based dosing based on genotype, by the KNMP Pharmacogenomics Working Group (Dr. Vera Deneer, den Haag, the Netherlands) and the European Medicine Agency Pharmacogenomics Working Party (Dr. Norma Anwar, London, UK). Professor George Patrinos (University of Patras, Greece) gave an update on the use of whole genome sequencing in pharmacogenomics, which followed by several company lectures that supported the event as sponsors.
In the afternoon sessions, there were lectures including the description of the Genomics England initiative by Prof. Tim Hubbard (Genomics England and Kings College London, UK), of the CPCT approach for the sequencing the tumor genome by Dr. Emile Voest (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and by the few European Pharmacogenomics initiatives, such as the European Society of Pharmacogenomics & Personalized Therapy, the European Pharmacogenomics Implementation Consortium (Eu-PIC; overview provided by Prof. Ron van Schaik, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands) and the HORIZON2020 U-PGx project, which was presented by its coordinator, Prof. Henk-Jan Guchelaar (Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands. In the latter project, the Golden Helix Foundation participates as a partner, responsible for the economic evaluation and dissemination.
