Zayed bin Sultan Center for Health Sciences as part of UAEU’s, participation in "UAE Innovation Month” organized a workshop on Genomic Medicine and Pharmacogenomic in the Sheikh Khalifa Auditorium in College of Medicine and Health Sciences.  The workshop highlighted the latest advances in genomics and genomic medicine. It emphasized the vast range of applications of genomics in medicine and health care, with a special focus on pharmacogenomics as one of the main applications of genomics that explain drug-gene interactions. It also described how implementing genomic medicine and pharmacogenomics can contribute to public health.

Prof. Vasilis Vasiliou, Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, USA  gave the first keynote lecture about “Genomics in Public Health Surveillance: from deadly viruses to disease susceptibility and environmental exposures”. He highlighted the cellular responses to environmental stress, gene-environment interactions, role of recent genomic advances in controlling pandemics, using the Zika pandemic (2015/2016) as an example. Then, Prof. Bassam R. Ali, Professor, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, gave a talk about “Genetics and Genomics in Medicine in 40 Minutes”. His main points of discussion were about the main concepts of genomics, DNA is our book of life, DNA determines differences between individuals, genomics and diseases, how genetic diseases are inherited, monogenic diseases. Hanadi Abdelrahman, PhD Student, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences pointed out in her presentation “Next Generation Sequencing in the Diagnosis of Monogenic Diseases” the importance of identifying disease causing variants in monogenic disorders, the definition of NGS, and the possible clinical applications. How can NGS be used to identify the genetic cause of rare monogenic disorders. The challenges and limitations of WES/WGS in clinical genetics. Whilst her colleague Zeina Al-Mahairi; PhD Student, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, stated in her presentation “Pharmacogenomics of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia” that one of the most important applications of pharmacogenomics is in cancer. Pediatric ALL is considered an excellent platform to apply pharmacogenomic studies as it shows how can the treatment outcomes of pediatric ALL improve through pharmacogenomics. Azhar Talal Rahma; PhD Student, Institute of Public Health, Zayed Bin Sultan Center for Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University highlighted in her talk “Pharmacogenomics and Public Health: The UAE reality”: the importance of pharmacogenomics, the extent of pharmacogenomics awareness and education globally, how pharmacogenomics contribute to public health as well as the evaluation of pharmacogenomics integration in university education in UAE. The 2nd keynote lecture was by Dr. George P. Patrinos; Associate Professor, University of Patras, Department of Pharmacy, Patras, Greece & Adjunct Professor, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences about “Public Health Pharmacogenomics”. In his lecture, he explained the diverse public health-related initiatives that would catalyze the integration of pharmacogenomics into the mainstream healthcare interventions. These initiatives pertain to economics, pricing and reimbursement in genomic medicine, regulatory, ethical, legal and societal issues, raising genomics awareness among the general public, enriching genomics education of healthcare professionals, and developing electronic tools to translate genomic information into a clinically meaningful format.

Dr. Fatima Al Maskari, Director of Zayed bin Sultan Center for Health Sciences, that this workshop was conducted in cooperation with Golden Helix Foundation, an international non-profit research organization aiming to advance research and education in the area of genome and personalized medicine. as part of the university’s participation in UAE Innovation Month activities.