Pharma SNP Consortium (PSC). Research on Pharmacokinetics related Genetic Polymorphism among Japanese Population.

Abstract

The 43 member companies of the Japan Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association (JPMA) established the Pharma SNP Consortium (PSC), a non-profit organization, which will implement research programs over the three years between 2000-2003 with a total budget of 1 billion yen. The objectives of the PSC are to determine where SNPs influencing pharmacokinetics exist and how often they occur in Japanese population. The expression and functional analyses of variants generated under the influence of SNP will also be studied. The following are concrete research themes of the PSC: Standardization to collect samples from human donors; informed consent, protection of privacy (anonymity, information management system, etc.), ethics committee, and procedures (blood sampling, storage, etc.). And the analysis on gene polymorphisms (SNPs) related with pharmacokinetics; to identify SNPs of approximately 180 pharmacokinetics related genes, which are drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters, to analyze the allelic frequency of SNPs on a general Japanese population group composed of about 800 individuals, to generate a database for the analysis of SNPs allelic frequency, and to express variants in insect cells, analyze their function and examine the influence on the drug responses. It is hoped that the PSC's plan will contribute to the development of the healthcare by constructing a common basis for the drug response analysis, create a more effective environment for the research on the human genome by the private sector in Japan by making standards to obtain blood samples, and furthermore facilitate discovery and development of safer and more effective medicines by cooperating with the Millennium Project.