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How this Gainesville company plans to give doctors new tool in fighting opioid addiction
opioid tool
Pro-Genex CEO Robbie Rupard, right, and President and CEO Brett Grauss are leading the Gainesville pharmacogenomics company in starting a project that will hypothetically lead to predicting the risk level of opioid addiction with patients. Rupard was inspired by Penn State’s similar study in 2017 with a 37-person sample size. Rupard will increase the sample size to 1,000; therefore, adding more accuracy to the study. - photo by Scott Rogers, DCN Regional Staff
One opioid prescription can be all it takes to launch into the downward spiral of addiction. Pro-GeneX, a pharmacogenomics company in Gainesville, aims to offer a tool for physicians to help them better gauge a person’s propensity for opioid addiction, before writing the prescription. “Our goal when we’re finished, is to have a deliverable for physicians that will use genetic information and an algorithm to produce a risk score,” Robbie Rupard, CEO of Pro-GeneX said. “This will give a doctor comfort when they feel like they need to give a little bit more, and give them caution when they’ve got one to worry about.” Rupard and Brett Grauss, CEO of Pro-GeneX Laboratories, established the company more than four years ago and have continued to provide individualized genetic profiles for patients. They do this by analyzing a person’s DNA and putting the results into a program, which gives a list of medications that work for the specific patient.