Abstract:

Pharmacogenetics (PGx) is a cornerstone of precision medicine with the greatest potential to have an immediate impact on current healthcare. Rapid advances in this area of knowledge, together with the decreasing costs of laboratory testing, highlight an imminent translation to clinical practice with a significant healthcare impact.

However, the implementation of PGx faces several barriers. One of the most important obstacles to its integration into clinical workflows is related to the knowledge of healthcare professionals. It is therefore essential that both physicians and pharmacists know the impact that PGx has on the efficacy and toxicity of certain drugs, that they know the tests available in the national health system for each treatment.

From the universities, the challenge is to integrate PGx training into the curriculum of the disciplines involved, ensuring that future professionals have a solid background in this area and know how to apply this knowledge to pharmacotherapeutic decision making. In Spain, PGx is currently taught in a small number of universities compared to the teaching given in other countries, such as France or the United States. Therefore, the aim of this article is to propose the structure of a new subject with a didactic and practical approach to successfully teach PGx to students of the Degree of Medicine and Degree of Pharmacy of the Miguel Hernández University of Elche.

It is a required subject taught in the 5th year of both degrees, with a total of 4.5 ECTS: 2.5 ECTS would correspond to the theoretical part that would be taught in the classroom with audiovisual equipment and the necessary resources for its development, and 2 ECTS corresponding to the practical part, which would be taught in the laboratory, with the instrumentation, material and reagents necessary to perform the genetic analysis that would complete the training.
Totaling 112.5 hours (Directed: 45; Shared: 22.5; Autonomous: 45), the structure of the subject is organized in 4 Didactic Units: U.1 Conceptual bases of PGx, where the student will understand the genetic bases underlying the differential response of patients to pharmacological treatment, identifying the different types of genetic variants; U.2 Analytical techniques, where the student will be trained at a theoretical and practical level in the various genotyping techniques currently used; U.3 Pharmacogenetics by therapeutic areas, in which the student will learn the therapeutic recommendations published in clinical guidelines for various groups of drugs; and U.4 Implementation in primary and hospital care, where the importance of the implementation of PGx will be integrated, knowing the different databases, clinical guidelines and strategies of precision medicine developed in Spain. The practical part is considered fundamental for the efficiency of this subject, since it allows the student to acquire technical skills of the complete process of pharmacogenetic analysis, since the sample is taking, genotyping analysis using different techniques, interpretation of results, up to the generation of the pharmacotherapeutic report with the appropriate recommendations.

The knowledge acquired in the course of this subject will allow new Spanish physicians to use pharmacogenetics as a precision tool, choosing more safely the drug and the optimal dose for each patient, providing a personalized therapy and working for a safer, more effective and efficient precision medicine.

Keywords:

Pharmacogenetics, Implementation, Precision Medicine, Pharmacotherapeutic Recommendations.