Prima Nexus Supports the 2015 Golden Helix Symposium on Pharmacogenomics in Kuala Lumpur

From the Prima Nexus archive: a look back at March 2015.

KUALA LUMPUR, 11 March 2015: Prima Nexus Sdn Bhd supported the 2015 Golden Helix Symposium: Next Generation Pharmacogenomics, held from 11 to 13 March 2015 at Connexion@Nexus, Bangsar South City, Kuala Lumpur. The University of Malaya, through its Pharmacogenomics Laboratory, organised the symposium with the Golden Helix Foundation, with 19 invited speakers from Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States.

A first for the Asia Pacific region

The Golden Helix Symposia are international conferences on genomic medicine, organised by the Golden Helix Foundation, a UK-based non-profit research organisation. Earlier meetings were held in Greece, Italy, the United Arab Emirates and Serbia. The 2015 meeting was the first held in the Asia Pacific region. Prof Datin Zahurin Mohamed of the University of Malaya chaired the organising committee, with Assoc Prof George P. Patrinos of the University of Patras, Greece, as co-chairman. The Ministry of Health Malaysia supported the event, and international bodies including the Genomic Medicine Alliance endorsed it.

Two days of talks and posters

Registration opened on the afternoon of 11 March, and the scientific programme ran on 12 and 13 March. The programme opened with a keynote lecture by Teri Manolio of the US National Human Genome Research Institute on the institute's genomic medicine programmes. Speakers from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia presented work on drug response in Asian populations, including severe skin reactions to medicines, drug-induced liver injury and genetic testing in the Malaysian population. The welcome message from the Ministry of Health noted that the symposium marked the official partnership between the Genomic Medicine Alliance and the South East Asian Pharmacogenomics group (SEAPharm).

Prima Nexus's part, and why it mattered

Prima Nexus supported the symposium, and the programme book listed Prima Nexus Sdn Bhd among the entities thanked for their support.

The Ministry of Health message noted that far more pharmacogenomic data existed for Western populations than for this region, and that Malaysia's multi-ethnic population could produce useful data. Prima Nexus supports genomics and precision medicine studies through its research capabilities and its preventive and predictive testing platforms.