Precision medicine improves safety and efficacy of therapies
Towards simplification of therapeutic drug monitoring with DOSINACO kit for anticoagulants
Pablo Zubiaur Precioso, PhD, MPharm, Servicio de Farmacología Clínica, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa
The team led by Francisco Abad-Santos, PhD, MD at the University Hospital of Madrid focuses on pharmacogenetics, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) and precision medicine. TDM can be used, for example, to determine whether the dose applied is still within the therapeutic range. For its research, the lab team uses DOSINACO, a reagent kit manufactured by Alsachim, a Shimadzu group company, for quantifying anticoagulants in human plasma.
The Alsachim team spoke with Dr Pablo Zubiaur (PhD, MPharm) who belongs to the Clinical Pharmacology Department, about the use of the kit and asked what makes DOSINACO so appealing. He gives some insights into his work and the context of applying the kit.
Can you outline the research you are conducting in your laboratory/department? With our research, we aim to advance precision medicine, meaning procedures and drugs that apply individual biomarkers of patients to assess the benefits and risks of therapies. This includes pharmacogenetic studies as well as studies related to therapeutic drug monitoring. Both strategies, when implemented in clinical practice, improve the safety and efficacy of therapies, quality of life of patients and the sustainability of health systems.
I am responsible for coordinating the lab team consisting of clinical pharmacologists, laboratory technicians, pre-doctoral biotechnologists and several undergraduate students from different disciplines.
How does DOSINACO help you to solve and optimize your daily work? What are your reasons for choosing the Alsachim reagent kit? We have promoted an observational study in which we aim to define the therapeutic range and pharmacogenetic markers of apixaban, dabigatran, rivaroxaban and edoxaban, that are anticoagulants. For this purpose, it is easier for us to carry out the analytical determinations with a commercial kit such as DOSINACO. According to our research, the kit is the only one of its kind on the market.
What are the trends and needs in your field that lead to applying the DOSINACO kit? What are your expectations for LC-MS/MS drug quantification in the future? Precision or personalized medicine is currently under development and will probably continue to expand in the upcoming years and decades. It is therefore expected that the number of labs that need to perform analytical determinations will increase. At least, that is our case. LC-MS commercial kits mean a considerable time saving for laboratories like ours, “small” and without dedicating 100 % of their activities to analytical chemistry.
