Conference Scene: Lessons learned from the 5th Statistical Analysis Workshop of the Pharmacogenetics Research Network

The Pharmacogenomics Research Network holds a statistical analysis workshop every other year to share novel statistical methods and study designs for pharmacogenomics research, as well as insightful analyses of substantive ongoing studies. The 5th workshop was held 15 April 2009, in Rochester (MN, USA), in conjunction with the general Pharmacogenomics Research Network meeting. This summary of the ten contributed talks highlights a variety of timely topics, including identification of functional variants, how to maximize power using various study designs, and pathway analysis approaches. We also discuss the keynote invited presentation by Terry Speed, which provided an overview of statistical issues with next-generation sequence data with an emphasis on some statistical challenges in mRNA sequence data. Novel applications of Poisson regression models demonstrated innovative, yet practical, approaches to distinguish between biological and technical sources of variation in the counts of mRNA transcript reads. Overall, the workshop emphasized the need for diverse approaches to conducting pharmacogenomics studies, as well as the evolving nature of the field.