Shaping the Future of Pharmacogenomics: STRIPE Drives Stakeholder Consensus at Inaugural Meeting

Pharmacy Times interviewed Benjamin Brown, executive director of American Society of Pharmacovigilance and co-founder of Standardizing Laboratory Practices in Pharmacogenomics (STRIPE), on the mission of the inaugural STRIPE Annual Meeting and Consensus Workshop held from October 23 to 25, 2024, at the US Pharmacopeia headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Brown discusses his background in the field and hopes for the future of pharmacogenomics as further consensus is reached around the standardization of pharmacogenomic practices.

Pharmacy Times: What is Standardizing Laboratory Practices in Pharmacogenomics (STRIPE), and what is the mission of the 2024 inaugural STRIPE Annual Meeting and Consensus Workshop?

Benjamin Brown: I'd say number 1, if you're just now learning about STRIPE, and this is the first time that you're ever hearing these words, I could invite you to learn more about us online on our website https://stopadr.org/stripe. But maybe even more importantly is that, whatever your role is as a stakeholder in the field of pharmacogenomics, there's a place for you here in STRIPE. And truly what our objectives are—going all the way back in harmony with the charter and the mission that we set out when we created STRIPE—was to standardize the laboratory practices around the implementation of pharmacogenomics. And so, just like we set out to do today, [this meeting] is just another milestone on our journey of doing just that.

STRIPE meeting organizers and attendees gather during the event for a photo at US Pharmacopeia headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Image Credit: American Society of Pharmacovigilance

Coming out of this meeting, there's some specific policies and standards we are seeking to reach consensus on as a community that apply to a variety of aspects of the implementation of pharmacogenomics from a regulatory standpoint, from an implementation standpoint, from a clinical or a medical standpoint. And so, whatever your subject matter expertise is in the field of pharmacogenomics, there are specific aspects of this technology that will impact you as well as your patients. So, we invite everybody to get involved, no voice is too small, no voice is too loud in our process of being able to arrive at [this goal]. We believe the core standards that essentially all stakeholders across pharmacogenomics agree on are of importance, and I think from there, when we accomplish that, we can use that as another building block to tackle the next set of really difficult challenges, because we're certainly not going to solve everything, and we didn't intend to solve every problem in the field of pharmacogenomics today. But to essentially embark on standardizing maybe the first 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 key problem statements that it seems everybody is still up in the air on, but if we had clarity on [these, we] would move the field forward. So, I think that's what everybody can expect coming out of this meeting is progress, more ambition, and working on the next set of challenges that impact stakeholders most.

Pharmacy Times: What is your experience and background in the field of pharmacogenomics?

Brown: Yeah, I started my career working on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley, and so I helped build and grow and buy and sell companies across life sciences and clinical laboratory space and diagnostics. And at the same time, I'm also a patient, and I'm a cancer survivor. I had stage 3 testicular cancer when I was in my early 20s, and that was a really transformative experience for me, really going through some of the challenges, a lot of the challenges you can experience in adverse drug events myself firsthand that a lot of the patients were seeking to champion through our collaborative efforts.

So, from my business background, what seems to be helpful in these environments is really trying to take a step back and better understand what are the objectives, what are the unique goals and missions of these different organizations and what's it worth if it works to this stakeholder group, what's it worth if it works to this stakeholder group, and be able to come at the organization and assemble these different stakeholders, not just like with an open mind, that's a given, that's table stakes, but with an opportunity to think about how can I help these individual organizations, how can we collectively help them solve shared challenges, and maybe in a lot of circumstances, present a perspective to a given stakeholder that they might not have been aware of, but once they are helps them better understand, overall, why participating is important. At the very beginning, obviously, everybody's got their own interests, and being able to bridge those gaps where they don't exist has been a really big challenge. But I believe with everybody that's participating today, it's something we're actively doing, and we're doing well. And I think that's a major success given the diversity of the different participants that we have in STRIPE.

Pharmacy Times: What is the role of the pharmacist in pharmacogenomics, and what is the future of pharmacogenomics in relation to consensus around standardization?

Brown: The role of the pharmacist is paramount in the advancement of pharmacogenomics. From the doctor diagnosing the patient, the pharmacist plays an integral role as they know drugs inside and out, and maybe up until now, nobody had discounted that per se, but I think we see that with this push to more collaborative and value-based care, that having more of the brain trust around the patient available is really going to have great outcomes and great impacts on patient care in general. And so, with the evolution of STRIPE, and I think the evolution coming out of this, everybody that's been with us from the beginning has been extremely ambitious. So, I think once individuals, organizations, and other communities see that we accomplish what we set out to do, and we've essentially, we put the flag in the ground almost 4 and a half years ago, and we accomplished our first set of milestones, I believe the confidence and the credibility in what our organization can accomplish only increases. I think with that, people are probably willing to be even more open about problems and challenges that maybe previously they were kind of tight lipped about because they didn't know—are these guys going to do anything? This isn't going to happen. You're going to just spend a bunch of time in committees—I've literally heard it all. And for me, that's super motivating because I feel like that's just part of the journey. There's always going to be the naysayers, and there's always going to be people that are waiting to see, can you actually do anything? And then once you do, they're like, all right, I'm willing to jump in.

Up until now, we've had a lot of early adopters that have really helped champion our cause. And I think, like anything with the diffusion of technology, once you've gotten through your early adopters, there's going to be the late comers and other people that are ready to jump in now that they see it's essentially been kind of de-risked, and we're ready for that. Again, we're welcome to tackle as many challenges as we can, knowing that this is the community to solve problems in the field of pharmacogenomics. We are it. It’s STRIPE. So, if you have a problem you want to solve in the field of pharmacogenomics, this is the place to do it, and we welcome having you join our community and get involved.