Mayo, Baylor Collaborate

A new sequencing study will look at 69 genes associated with drug reactions and drug metabolism in 10,000 patients in the Mayo biobank to predict any potentially adverse reactions or ineffectual drug response. Any findings relevant to a patient will be noted in the person's electronic medical record, which the Mayo Clinic said could preempt adverse drug reactions and ineffective treatments. Baylor's Human Genome Sequencing Center will provide sequencing services for the study as well as collaborate on analyzing the data to find new clinically relevant genomic variants associated with drug response.

The study is notable because it will sequence patients' genomes, rather than genotype them, Richard Weinshilboum, director of Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine pharmacogenomics program, told GenomeWeb.

The collaboration is an example "of how a partnership between a genome center and a premier clinical group can speed the translation of valuable genomic tests into useful advances in patient care," Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor, said in a statement.

The Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery will simultaneously analyze the results of the study and track health outcomes to see if sequencing genes related to drug response and putting that genomic data in medical records can improve care for patients.

This month, Baylor announced it would explore the possibility of performing clinical exome sequencing in adults.