Pharmacogenomics: How Genes Shape Drug Response and Side Effects

That is the most in-thing right now, which is longevity testing, which can tell you your actual biological age. Supposing you are 30 years of age by your date of birth, but because of stress your body may actually be 40 years old biologically. You can prevent that: we can first study why your body is aging faster, and then you can modify your lifestyle based on the genetics, what you should eat and what you should not eat and what kind of therapy you should take, and it gives you a lot of a personalised report.

For example, sickle cell anaemia is caused by a point mutation where only one letter in the genome is changing. So what we can do is if A is becoming B, we make the B back to A and edit that gene, and deliver it through an IV cannula in the form of a solution. That is what is going to get integrated into the patient, and the disease can be cured. That is what gene therapy is.

Well, not yet. What we can do is, supposing somebody in my family got cancer, I can get my genes tested so I know whether I am at risk of getting that cancer, and then I can try to catch it early, because once you're at a last stage it becomes difficult to cure. If you catch it early you can still cure the cancer.

The recommendation is to test at least 50 genes. If somebody is interested I can send the list across to the Jivo team and they can share it with everybody.

Yes, that is what is called designer babies, which can be done. You cannot really extract only particular genes, but you can make designer babies now in the lab through clinical embryology.

The study of how a person's genetic makeup affects their response to a particular drug or therapy, including how much benefit and how many side effects they experience at a given dose.

Childhood cancers, some adult cancers such as colon cancer, and psychiatric medication, according to Dr. Nathany.

Yes. The same medicine, even something as common as paracetamol, can produce fewer or more side effects in different patients purely because of genetic variation.