Pharmacogenomics could replace ‘trial-and-error’ with science from the human genome
May 28, 2004 | Source: KurzweilAI
Pharmacogenomics, which bases the choice of medications and their dosages on the patient’s specific genetic makeup (“individualized medicine”) could lower the cost of health care by decreasing the occurrence of adverse drug effects and increasing the probability of successful therapy, investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital report in the May 27 issue of Nature.
The key to pharmacogenomics is its ability to predict how a patient will respond to medications by identifying individual polymorphisms, or variations, in specific genes that contribute to that response. Pharmacogenomics can also help investigators discover more effective drugs, such as anti-cancer agents.
What is needed, according to the authors, are large-scale clinical trials that incorporate comprehensive pharmacogenomic studies. To bring the significant potential benefits of pharmacogenomics to the public, medical practice has to evolve from the trial-and-error approach. For that to happen, society must institute protections against misuse of genetic information.