Neelam Bance was speaking with a physician about a patient’s medication when she started to realize something wasn’t adding up.
An experienced pharmaceutical marketing and sales leader, Bance spent much of her time on the front lines of family medicine. She would often hear that a medication worked great for some patients, but either failed or caused complications for others.
“I knew what the clinical trials reported, and sometimes I would think the physician wasn’t prescribing it correctly or their patients weren’t following the directions. But then I met someone working in pharmacogenomics, and I realized it's not the doctor's fault. It wasn't the patient's fault. It was just not the right medication for them,” Bance said.
Pharmacogenomics is the science of drug-gene compatibility. In the same way genes determine our eye colour, height and weight, our genes also determine how we react to medicines. Bance said our genes can affect how we respond to common medications like Tylenol and Advil. When it comes to medications used in mental health, heart disease and oncology, and others, the way our bodies respond gets much more complicated.
“Much of that has to do with your genes, and it is an extremely important piece of the puzzle. But physicians have been trained to use a trial-and-error method of prescribing medications,” she said. “They say, ‘give it a try, let's see how it works, and come back in three months.’”
Pharmacogenomics changes that approach by helping physicians prescribe the right medication for the patient’s unique genome. She said research into the field began in the 1970s but never reached mainstream awareness.
Bance is working to change that now as the co-founder of MedGeneius, a medtech startup that provides configurable reports that can inform on how someone's genes impacts how they respond to medication.
