A new approach to pharmacogenomics

The medicine in the 21st century will be so called "evidence based medicine" or "personalized medicine," based on the principle of "right drug to right patient." Pharmacogenomics covers the entire spectrum of genes that determines drug behavior and sensitivity, and we anticipate it will bring major impact on the healthcare system as well as the drug discovery process in the near future. Three waves of genomic impact are predicted to arise as follows: The first wave will hit on existing drugs and late-phase development candidates within the next 2-3 years, aiming to minimize the risks in clinical trials (adverse events, resistance, etc.). The wave will then affect the candidate selection process in the early pre-development stage, and finally the disease gene finding to target discovery process. The driving force will be technologies such as SNPs database, differential gene expression (DGE) analysis, proteomics, serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) and bioinformatics. This new approach of genomic discovery (so called "integrated approach") requires knowledge on how to implement and integrate new valuable technologies from an early stage of the discovery process. The implication of SNPs, high throughput proteomics and application of structural genomics will be the key issues in the pharmacogenomics era.