enter in Diatech, the Pharmacogenetics company

  Pharmacogenetics in Italy is Diatech.

Pharmacogenetics, and pharmacogenomics, have introduced a dramatic and still ongoing revolution in the fight against cancer. Actually, Diatech is the only company in Italy focusing research efforts into pharmacogenetics, intended as the study of genetic variation that affect response to drugs. Support to Diatech’s research efforts derives from selling pharmacogenetic tests for personalized and predictive medicine with priority focused to the most invasive therapies: antitumoral treatments. Pharmacogenetic kits developed by Diatech aim to personalize chemotherapy and radiotherapy, leading to higher efficacy, and to reduced side effects. Based on this philosophy, Diatech has developed “Irinotecan response®", a CE-IVD labeled kit which allows to analyze genetic polymorphisms predictive of irinotecan toxicity, and therefore to personalize the treatment of late stage colorectal cancer. Today pharmacogenetic tests are becoming mandatory before the administration of antitumor drugs of the latest generation, i.e. “intelligent” or “biological” drugs, which are able to attack specifically only the altered molecules responsible for the uncontrolled growth and proliferation of the neoplastic cells. The two latest kits developed by Diatech allow the personalization of treatment with “intelligent drugs” of patients suffering from metastatic colorectal cancer. In fact, the two kits “Anti EGFR MoAb response® /(KRASstatus)" and "Anti EGFR MoAb response® (BRAF status)" allow to detect those mutations within the KRAS and BRAF genes that are responsible for an unfavorable prognosis, and for the resistance to monoclonal anti EGFR antibodies (panitumumab/Vectibix® e cetuximab/Erbitux®). These kits testify that Diatech is the only Italian company able to produce reliable, and simple to use pyrosequencing based kits which allow to analyze the KRAS and BRAF gene status (wild-type/mutated), indicative of colorectal cancer prognosis and predictive of response to the specific immunotherapy.