Third Santorini conference pharmacogenomics workshop report: "Pharmacogenomics at the crossroads: what else than good science will be needed for the field to become part of Personalized Medicine?".

This workshop discussed the use of pharmacogenomics knowledge in clinical practice. It was organized in three sections: educational needs, definition of industry as a potential trigger, and regulatory aspects. Regarding pharmacogenomics education, it appears that this is truly lacking, except for patients, who are becoming increasingly educated thanks to the media. Regarding administrators, education is mainly a problem of cost. Indeed, even if cost-effective for society on the whole, pharmacogenomic tests will be expensive for hospitals. Physicians are facing an overabundance of information. They must be helped to bridge the gap between knowledge/research and clinical application. Collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and the diagnostics industry could be one of the triggers. Moreover, there is a lack of qualification of this information, even though some guidelines are being produced. The Food and Drug Administration organizes workshops that often lead to publications on pharmacogenomic education, genomic data aims and development concepts, which can finally be translated into guidelines. Industry can contribute to pharmacogenomic development, not only through research, but also through marketing activities, which would promote the use of pharmacogenomics by physicians. Legal aspects were also considered in terms of the problem of availability and the degree of qualification of commercial drug tests on the market. The Innovative Medicine Initiative was also presented, which is a public-private partnership to create a biomedical research and development leader to benefit patients and society. Finally, a technical report from the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies on the socioeconomic impact of pharmacogenomics in the EU was presented.

EPIDAUROS Biotechnologie AG.

EPIDAUROS Biotechnologie AG is a leading provider of pharmacogenetic consulting, genotyping and research services to the international pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, contract research organizations and healthcare providers. The company's mission is to improve safety, efficacy and predictability in drug development and drug therapy. EPIDAUROS determines its customers' needs in the field of pharmacogenetics using an in-depth consultancy process. The development and conduct of genotyping assays for drug-metabolizing enzymes, drug transporters and drug targets (for example, receptors)--all performed under stringent quality standards--are a major activity at EPIDAUROS. The company offers its research services to academic and industrial partners for the development of innovative diagnostic solutions by using its intellectual property.

Relationships between fuselloviruses infecting the extremely thermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus: SSV1 and SSV2.

The fusellovirus SSV2 from an Icelandic Sulfolobus strain was isolated, characterized and its complete genomic sequence determined. SSV2 is very similar in morphology, replication, genome size and number of open reading frames (ORFs) to the type virus of the family, SSV1 from Japan, except in its high level of uninduced virus production. The nucleotide sequences are, however, only 55% identical to each other, much less than related bacteriophage, related animal viruses and the rudiviruses of Sulfolobus, SIRV1 and SIRV2. Nevertheless the genome architecture is very similar between the two viruses, indicating that despite this genomic dissimilarity the virus genomes are mostly homologous. Unlike SSV1, the sequence of SSV2 indicates integration into a glycyl tRNA gene and is completely missing a DNA packaging gene. There is a unique, perfectly tandemly directly repeated sequence of 62 nucleotides in SSV2 that has no similarity to known sequences or structures. By comparison to the SSV2 genome, an integrated partial fusellovirus genome was found in the Sulfolobus solfataricus P2 genome further confirming the dynamism of the Sulfolobus genome. Clustering of cysteine codon containing ORFs both in SSV1 and SSV2 indicates that these Fuselloviridae arose from a genome fusion event.