Relative Effectiveness of Schizophrenia Therapy (REST)

The Medco Research Institute® and SureGene, LLC have entered into a novel investigative research collaboration to evaluate whether variation in genetic biomarkers previously identified by SureGene can help predict drug response for widely prescribed antipsychotic drugs in patients with serious mental illness. The results of this research could help provide evidence supporting the development of genetic tests that would assist doctors to make more precise prescribing decisions, potentially leading to improvements in outcomes, compliance and safety for these mental health patients.

Choosing the correct antipsychotic medication for patients suffering from severe psychiatric illness is a major challenge. When patients are not prescribed an effective antipsychotic drug, they have an elevated risk of experiencing a serious adverse drug event. Current studies have suggested that less than one in three patients suffering from schizophrenia and related disorders will have an improvement in symptoms on the first antipsychotic drug prescribed. Poor response to treatment and the side effects of antipsychotic drugs can also result in low compliance, with 50 percent of patients discontinuing drug use within six months of starting a prescription. High discontinuation and poor compliance often results in hospitalization. While there are no currently marketed ways to identify which antipsychotic drug is optimal for a given patient, SureGene's genetic test has demonstrated the ability to stratify drug efficacy of atypical antipsychotics, such as olanzapine and risperidone.

Through their collaboration, the companies will conduct the REST study – Relative Effectiveness of Schizophrenia Therapy – a prospectively designed clinical trial to further validate SureGene developed genetic biomarkers as predictors of efficacy and safety for commonly used atypical antipsychotics in the treatment of serious mental illness. In addition, the collaboration will evaluate the cost effectiveness of using SureGene biomarkers as a standard part of future clinical care for mental illness.

This study with SureGene is Medco's first personalized medicine research effort in the area of mental illness.