Rational use of drug

Pharmacogenomics is a scientific discipline that examines the genetic basis for individual variations in response to therapeutics. This area of investigation promises to develop individualized medicines tailored to patients’ genotypes, as well as individualized laboratory testing to determine a patient’s ability to metabolize a particular medication. However, identifying and genotyping a vast number of genetic polymorphisms in large populations is likely to pose a great challenge

One way to explain pharmacogenomics is to identify what kind of information it provides. First, it allows us to answer some fundamental questions such as why certain individuals respond to some drugs and not others; why do some individuals require higher or lower doses of certain drugs to make them therapeutically effective; which patients are going to respond to a given drug therapy; and which patients will experience toxic effects from therapy?”

For some time, the medical community has suspected a genetic basis for individuality in drug metabolism and drug response. But only with the advent of sophisticated molecular techniques has personalized testing become feasible for genetic the characteristics involved in drug uptake and metabolism. This has been further confirmed by the identification of discrete genetic differences in the genes that encode both drug-metabolizing enzymes and receptors, and it is this link between structural differences in the genetic material—and the role they play with enzymes and receptors—that is the focus of pharmacogenomics.

Join us as this month’s expert—Steven Wong, PhD, from the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office—takes a look at the theory behind personalized medicine and emerging applications in pharmacogenomics.