Five questions with Dr. Richard Kim

Dr. Richard Kim is a physician-scientist and Chair/Chief, Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the Department of Medicine at London Health Sciences Centre.

Q: What is personalized medicine?

A: Personalized medicine is the right dose of the right drug for the right patient at the right time.  On the health care delivery and research side, we can ask the right questions and test for our patient’s genetic makeup, when they need to start drug therapy.  So when we’re seeing patients, we can offer more tailored treatment advice that will treat our patients correctly the first time.

Q: How would you describe the potential for this area of research?

A: I think London has a lot of potential with this great hospital and millions of patients that we care for.  Our area of research in personalized medicine has enormous potential for many groups working together, both basic and clinical, to deliver on the promise of what we call real research for our patients that makes their lives better.

Q: What is your single greatest accomplishment?

A: People talk about translational medicine and hope to conduct research that actually helps patients.  In reality, this is very difficult to do, and very few places in the world are able to implement these kinds of goals.  I think my biggest accomplishment has been the opportunity to create the foundation that will allow researchers and health care providers to work together to deliver on the promise of excellence in translational medicine. I think we are starting to see silos being replaced by collaboration and team-work, by many different groups of people within London’s health care system to deliver best research and best patient care.

Q: What is your vision for personalized medicine over the next five years?

A: Our goal is to start focusing on drugs that we know already have the highest degree of toxicity.  Over the next five years, we want to put a system into place where we can deliver the best care, but also learn from our patients on the research side.  It’s really a partnership with patients because we can learn how differences in genetic makeup alter their response to drugs, and how to use genomic information to the day-to-day delivery of health care to our patients.

Q: Why would someone want to support personalized medicine?

A: I think from a donor’s perspective, it should be emphasized that not many groups in the country are involved with the practical side of delivering personalized medicine to real world patients.  At LHSC, we have great people, infrastructure, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and basic scientists that can work on these very practical problems.  If you have breast cancer, colon cancer, or if you’re on warfarin or statin drugs, we would like to be able to move forward and tell you which types of drugs or drug doses would work best for you so that as a patient, you will have confidence that you are getting the best and the most appropriate drug therapy. This is so important in that for some illnesses, it could mean the difference between life and death.