A call for the creation of personalized medicine databases

The success of the Human Genome Project raised expectations that the knowledge gained would lead to improved insight into human health and disease, identification of new drug targets and, eventually, a breakthrough in healthcare management. However, the realization of these expectations has been hampered by the lack of essential data on genotype--drug-response phenotype associations. We therefore propose a follow-up to the Human Genome Project: forming global consortia devoted to archiving and analysing group and individual patient data on associations between genotypes and drug-response phenotypes. Here, we discuss the rationale for such personalized medicine databases, and the key practical and ethical issues that need to be addressed in their establishment.