« back to program

Timothy Harkins [Product Line Manager TaqMan® Genotyping Applications Applied Biosystems] Presentation Title TaqMan® Drug Metabolism Genotyping Assays Presentation Category Drug Metabolism Genotyping Assays Contact Applied Biosystems Division Headquarters 850 Lincoln Centre Drive Foster City, CA 94404 U.S.A. T 800-327-3002 F 650-638-5884 » Sponsor Showcase Biography Tim Harkins received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah where he studied enzyme kinetics to elucidate molecular mechanisms. His post-doctoral work focused on cancer research studying DNA Topoisomerase II, the major drug target for chemotherapy. After managing a microarray business unit for gene expression, Dr. Harkins now manages Applied Biosystems' Custom TaqMan® Assay Service, which supports multiple genotyping, gene expression, and sequence detection applications. He recently spearheaded the launch, and manages all TaqMan® Drug Metabolism Genotyping Assays products. Abstract Pharmacogenetics, the understanding of how polymorphisms affect drug response in individuals, has become an area of focus in both basic research and drug development. Designing robust assays for specific functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), multiple nucleotide polymorphisms (MNPs), and insertions/deletions (in/dels) in genes that code for drug metabolism enzymes (DMEs) can be challenging because of the nonstandard information within the allele nomenclature resources, the homology issues associated with the DME genes, and finally generating a functional assay for the specific polymorphism-of-interest. In this presentation, we will discuss the development of a collection of TaqMan® Drug Metabolism Genotyping Assays for the detection of polymorphisms in specific drug metabolism and transporter genes.