Pharmacogenomics: Bench to bedside

Abstract

Extract: Pharmacogenetics is the study of how genetic inheritance affects a person's response to drugs. A major goal for pharmacogenetic research has been the individualization of drug therapy, by which doctors could more precisely cater to an individual's physiological particularities when prescribing drugs, which would both maximize efficacy and minimize toxicity. Advances in pharmacogenetics have converged with rapid developments in human genomics; as a result, pharmacogenetics has evolved into pharmacogenomics. We will briefly review the development of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics, and outline factors that have influenced the "translation" of pharmacogenomics from the research bench to the patients' bedside. The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries saw the "therapeutic revolution" (which had resulted in the development of drugs to treat diseases ranging from hypertension to childhood leukemia) converge with the "genomic revolution."