Thailand hosts, for first time, regional pharmacogenomics seminar

BANGKOK, February 2 (TNA) - Thailand on Thursday hosted a Southeast Asian conference on pharmacogenomics for the first time to develop regional cooperation on researches regarding impacts of genetic diversity on drug use, which will improve the life of 560 million people in the region. Thai Science and Technology Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi opened the international conference, in which leading researchers from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand participated to exchange their knowledge and experiences for the sake of sustainable researches on pharmacogenomics, the development of effective drugs which are free of side effects and the better life of 560 million people in Southeast Asia. Pharmacogenomics deals with the genetic diversity, which influences individuals' responses to medicines and will play more important roles in the near future. As the cost of individual genome mapping has dropped from 500,000 baht to 30,000 baht, developing countries are now able to apply it, instead of using the genome information of Americans, Europeans, Africans, Chineses, Japaneses and Koreans which are different from Southeast Asian people. (TNA)