The state-of-the-art in predictive toxicogenomics

Predictive toxicogenomics, ie, the acquisition of advanced knowledge of the safety profile of a compound using genomic biomarkers, is a technology that provides much optimism for improving early drug discovery decisions. Toxicogenomics creates an opportunity to shift attrition to earlier stages in drug development to a point where course-corrective action can be taken with relatively lower financial costs, thus improving the efficiency of the drug development process. This review will survey the current state-of-the-art in toxicogenomics for predicting toxicity, both in vivo and in vitro, with emphasis on the use of classification algorithms and the importance of toxicogenomic databases for biomarker discovery and validation.