Interview: Felix Frueh, Head of personalized medicine research and development at Medco

Felix W Frueh, PhD, is a Vice President of Medco Health Solutions (NJ, USA) where he leads Medco's personalized medicine research and development organization. In this function, Dr Frueh manages Medco's expanding research efforts in personalized medicine, leveraging the newest developments in science to improve the safety and effectiveness of prescription drug care. He is also responsible for the development of Medco's Personalized Medicine Research Center which is under construction in Whitestown (IN, USA). Prior to joining Medco, Dr Frueh was an Associate Director for Genomics at the US FDA, where he built up and led the core genomics review team in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and chaired the first FDA-wide, interdisciplinary pharmacogenomics review group. Prior to the FDA, he was a managing partner at Stepoutside Consulting, LLC (MD, USA) and held senior positions at Transgenomic (NE, USA) and Protogene Laboratories (CA, USA). Dr Frueh's academic career includes a faculty appointment at the Departments of Pharmacology and Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington DC, USA, and postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University (CA, USA) as well as the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he also received his PhD in biochemistry. Dr Frueh lives in Maryland, USA, with his wife and two sons.