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20 GP practices across England are now participating in the PROGRESS trial, a research study designed to establish the feasibility of providing an NHS-wide pharmacogenomics service that identifies genetic changes associated with commonly prescribed drugs.
Providing an update on the trial at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress (CPC), held in London on 9 May 2025, Vicky Chaplin, senior clinical lead for the Genomics Unit at NHS England, said that the programme is now live in 19 GP practices, with one further GP practice being onboarded.
A slide shown during the presentation also indicated that nine of the GP practices are using PROGRESSRx — a tool that integrates pharmacogenomic results directly into prescribing systems — which enables guidance pop-ups at the point of prescribing.
The PROGRESS trial began in June 2023 with more than 250 participants, the majority of whom were taking statins, antidepressants or proton pump inhibitors.
In its first phase, the trial ran across ten practices in north west England.
It then expanded across in England in February 2025, with the aim of recruiting an extra 1,450 participants by 31 December 2025.
Chaplin revealed that samples from more than 673 participants have been processed so far, with 93% of participants having a clinically relevant variation in one of the four important study genes and 10% of participants having a “red flag” recommendation advising that a drug should be switched.
In addition, the programme found that some 80% of guidance has been followed by healthcare professionals and out of 376 participants, 131 (35%) have had a change to their index prescription, said Chaplin.
She added that the trial will finish in early 2026 and an assessment of its impact and value will be produced in the fourth quarter of 2025/2026, which will inform commissioning moving forward.
Commenting on the figures, William Newman, north west clinical lead for the PROGRESS project, said: “The expansion of the PROGRESS study to 20 GP practices across England marks a significant and welcome step forward in embedding pharmacogenomics into routine primary care.
“The fact that almost half of these practices are already using ProgressRx — a tool specifically designed to support clinical decision-making in this context — is particularly encouraging. It demonstrates a growing readiness among GPs to integrate genomic information into everyday prescribing.
“This progress reflects the increasing reach of the project, which in turn will inform the development of more personalised, effective and safer patient care.
“NHS England’s commitment to scaling this initiative nationally is a crucial milestone in the transformation of medicines optimisation.”
At the CPC, Chaplin also revealed that NHS England is working in partnership with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to develop a pharmacogenomics prescriber competency framework for all prescribers, with a provisional launch date of November 2025.
