October 29, 2010
Mary V. Relling, PharmD, the chair of pharmaceutical sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is this year’s recipient of the Award for Clinical Service from the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Relling’s research is based on the need to improve drug therapy of childhood leukemia by better understanding the underlying mechanisms of how each individual patient responds to the medications used to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“While currently available medications can cure the great majority of children with ALL, all of the medications may be associated with adverse effects,” Relling says. “Most children are cured with relatively few side effects, but a subset of children endure some serious ones, and some are not cured at all. Our goal is to study genetics to determine why there is variation in patients and use the results to design a more effective chemotherapy treatment for each child.”
The IPIT Award for Clinical Service annually honors a person who has made significant direct contributions to the advancement of individualized therapy in clinical practice.
“Over the past twenty years Dr. Relling has had a consistent output of therapy-changing research for childhood ALL,” says Howard McLeod, PharmD, director of UNC IPIT. “Through using genome-wide studies, she and her colleagues are discovering new genes that could be good targets for anticancer drugs and how variations in those genes affect the metabolism of the drug in each individual patient.”
McLeod will present the award to Relling during a ceremony on Nov. 2 at 2:00 p.m. in the Howard Q. and Mescal S. Ferguson Auditorium (2001 Kerr Hall) on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. Relling will present a seminar entitled, “Pharmacogenomics of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia” with a reception immediately following.
Mary V. Relling, PharmD
Relling received her PharmD from the University of Utah College of Pharmacy and is currently the chair of pharmaceutical sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Her department’s research mission is to elucidate the basis of interindividual differences in response to medications, and the clinical mission is to provide the highest quality comprehensive clinical pharmaceutical care to children with catastrophic diseases.
Relling’s interests are in antineoplastic pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in children, pharmacogenetics of antileukemic therapy, and host- and treatment-related risk factors for adverse effects of therapy. Relling is one of the principal investigators within the Pharmacogenomics Research Network and a member of the Institute of Medicine.
The impetus for her research is the need to improve drug therapy of childhood leukemia by better understanding the contributions of and mechanisms underlying interindividual differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Using currently available medications, acute lymphoblastic leukemia is cured in the great majority of children. However, all of these medications may be associated with adverse effects. She is studying the basis for interpatient variability in response to several of the most commonly used medications to treat leukemia, including methotrexate, mercaptopurine, asparaginase, dexamethasone, and etoposide.
UNC Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy
The institute was formed in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy as a collaborative effort with the School of Medicine, Gillings School of Global Public Health and the School of Nursing and with support from the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences. Pharmacogenetics is the study of how genetic variation among individuals contributes to differences in the way people respond to medicines.
Leadership in key areas of pharmacogenomic research is fostered by contiguous office and laboratory space that bolster collaboration and enable the development of comprehensive research investigations and treatment tools. IPIT also offers the services of core facilities in molecular genomics, cellular phenotyping and bioinformatics to add to the excellent core facilities already existing at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For more information, visit www.ipit.unc.edu.
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