Issues in Translation of Pharmacogenomics into Clinical Practice

Clinical laboratory tests are commonly used for supporting the diagnosis and prognosis of a disease, monitoring the efficacy progress of therapeutic management decisions, and measuring the foreign toxins. Recent advances in genomics have resulted in the generation of new assay panels to support personalized drug therapy – this offers new opportunities for clinical laboratories to make important contributions to healthcare. Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is a recognized discipline within pharmacology that involves testing relevant human genes, whose products are involved with the inter-individual variability of a drug’s pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system profile. The effective use of PGx testing promises to improve the therapeutic efficacy of drugs while reducing the incidence and severity of adverse drug effects, and drive the optimum drug selection for therapy.