Dear Colleague,

Patient to patient variability in the response to drugs, is a well known problem in the optimization of pharmacological management strategies.  Such variability occurs both in therapeutic outcomes as well as in the occurrence and severity of adverse reactions.

Global advances in genetic research, have revealed inherited genetic variations which significantly contribute to this drug response variability.  Pharmacogenomic-based testing is a fast evolving clinical tool, which aims to streamline drug treatment, by offering ways to predict the response to a specific drug in a specific patient prior to actual clinical administration

 The GoldenHelix Institute of Biomedical Research and the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta will be organizing a Pharmacogenomics Day at the University of Malta on Saturday 3 December 2011, between 09.00 and 16.15.

You are cordially being invited to participate in this conference, which is the fifth in a series currently being organized internationally.  It will bring together a team of foreign and local speakers, and will present the way forward in this fast developing field.

Registration is free of charge.  Online registration is available at http://www.goldenhelixsymposia.org, and prospective participants are kindly requested to register in order to ensure a place at the meeting.

 For further information, please email pgx11@um.edu.mt. -  Brochure

The Malta College of Family Doctors is awarding 3 CPD points to members who attend this meeting.

 The organizing committee would like to take this opportunity to thank all its sponsors and supporters, without whom this conference would not have been possible.

 Regards

 The Organising Committee

 Dr Godfrey Grech, Senior Lecturer, Department of Pathology, University of Malta

Dr Anthony G Fenech, Senior Lecturer, Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Malta

Dr Joseph J Borg, Lecturer, Department of Applied Biomedical Sciences, University of Malta

Prof George P Patrinos, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy, University of Patras, Greece