Saving Lives With Tailor-Made Medication - New York Times: "MEMPHIS — In Mary V. Relling’s office in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital sits a small ceramic statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of impossible causes.

Mary V. Relling with St. Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of impossible causes. Dr. Relling, the head of the department of pharmaceutical sciences at St. Jude, has a fondness for impossible causes.
Her own is pharmacogenetics, a clinical discipline in which doctors use high-tech genetic testing to custom-make drugs to patients’ individual needs.

Though pharmacogenetics is controversial and not yet widely done, Dr. Relling, 46, travels the country advocating its use. At St. Jude, patients with leukemia are now routinely given genetic tests to determine their individual response to a medication. “We’ve seen it save lives here,” she said. “That’s made me a believer.”"