Medco Health Solutions, Inc., announced this week that it will conduct a clinical trial to assess whether clopidogrel bisulfate (Plavix®, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-aventis) is just as effective as the newer drug prasugrel (Effient™, Eli Lilly and Company) in people who lack a genetic variation that inhibits their metabolism of clopidogrel. This new research has [...]

Tags: clopidogrel, clotting, comparative effectiveness research, CYP2C19, Effient, Francis Collins, heart, Medco, pharmacogenomics, Plavix, prasugrel

In 2005 two well-known human geneticists, Francis Collins and Thomas Gelehrter, made a bet: Collins wagered that by the 2008 American Society for Human Genetics meeting, genomewide association studies would have led to the discovery of at least four “validated – not just guessed at” susceptibility variants for at least five common diseases.
Collins won his [...]

Tags: David Goldstein, David Hunter, Francis Collins, genomewide association studies, Joel Hirschhorn, New England Journal of Medicine, Peter Kraft