IPIT Good.

UNC created the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy (IPIT) with the vision to create a new structure to generate and implement a new unifying programmatic system - to bind together the work of clinicians, pharmacologists, basic scientists, outcomes researchers, economists, and biostatisticians to develop individualized drug therapies using a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach.

Expanding the application of pharmacogenomics and developing individualized drug therapies involves a level of complexity that a single discipline cannot attempt in isolation. IPIT’s interdisciplinary team of investigators from UNC’s Schools of Pharmacy, Medicine and Public Health, as well as experts from the Lineberger Cancer Center and Carolina Center for Genome Sciences, will focus on generating adequate clinical data to support the economic, regulatory and clinical usefulness of pharmacogenomics, reducing obstacles that until now have slowed the progress of pharmacogenomics therapy into practice. Other partners important to the process are from the Schools of Nursing, Law, Business, and Journalism, and they will help to shape the innovative promise to bring cutting edge therapies into the clinic more effectively.

IPIT will also partner with researchers and regulators at the federal level. IPIT will continue to be closely involves with other pharmacogenomics researchers at the National Institute of Health. To continue to be closely involved with regulatory decision involved pharmacogenomics products, IPIT has asked officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to hold regulatory appointments with the Institute.

At UNC we are looking at innovative ways to foster the collaboration of all the disciplines involved that reside within and also external to the UNC campus, but also involve insurers and payers early in the research process to bring pharmacogenomics to the bedside and to clinical practice.