The therapeutics efficacy lottery could be solved by the introduction of personalised medicine, a concept that has been talked about for years but is now becoming reality.

In her keynote address at the RPS conference, Patricia Oakley, teaching and research fellow in public policy and management at King’s College London, outlined Government projects that have seen the opening of 10 genomics medicines centres and, over the next few years, will see the launch of two proton beam centres and a stem cell research centre in the UK.

“At the moment, we don’t know which drugs work in which people,” said Dr Oakley. Therapeutic efficacy for many conditions was unacceptably low, she said, highlighting the fact that for certain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease the response rate to treatment was just 25 and 30 per cent respectively.

“The Government is creating much better purchase for the state by greater improved efficacy of drugs,” she said, explaining that genomics could be used to develop individualised medicines with a much higher success rate. Pharmacists need to be aware of such advances in healthcare, as well as the technology that sits beneath it, notably the emerging field of predictive analytics and clinical bioinformatics.

While there is only one place in England currently involved in this line of work, this will be replicated across the country and will be tied into stem cell research as well as the genomics projects, Dr Oakley said. “This is not theory – the investments are rolling right now and we are in the build-up.”