NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The International Serious Adverse Events Consortium (SAEC) announced today four new partners that have joined the initiative as it launches Stage II of its research efforts.
The new partners are the University of Liverpool and Newcastle University — both which were announced as partners earlier this month — the HMO Research Network, and Cerner.
As previously reported by GenomeWeb Daily News, the University of Liverpool will work with SAEC to study the genetics involved in a serious drug reaction called hypersensitivity that involves the immune system and generally involve serious skin rashes. Newcastle University will run the International Drug Induced Liver Injury Consortium.
SAEC, which is an industry-funded partnership that includes the pharmaceutical industry, the US Food and Drug Administration, Wellcome Trust, and academic institutions, said today that the HMO Research Network will collaborate on exploring why the genetic makeup of some individuals makes them more likely to experience serious adverse events. Cerner will provide a platform to gather data for studies that focus on liver injury, serious skin rash, and other hypersensitivity reactions.
The consortium also announced the launch of Stage II of its efforts, which will further explore gene variants that may predict an individual's risk of developing immunologic-related adverse reactions to specific drugs or classes of drugs.
It said that pharmaceutical partners supporting the Stage II effort include Abbott, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, and Takeda.
"The finding that some genetic variants confer risk for multiple drugs tells us that it may be possible to develop well-characterized maps that identify specific genes that could put patients at risk for a number of drug-specific adverse events," Michael Dunn, head of the Wellcome Trust Molecular and Physiological Sciences Department, said in a statement. "These results have energized our interest in exploring the genome to gain a better understanding of rare, serious adverse events and lay the foundation for our Stage 2 Research effort."