Cardiovascular pharmacogenomics of adrenergic receptor signaling: clinical implications and future directions

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the targets for many drugs, and genetic variation in coding and noncoding regions is apparent in many such receptors. In this superfamily, adrenergic receptors (ARs) were among the first in which single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were discovered, and studies including in vitro mutagenesis, genetically modified mouse models, human ex vivo and in vitro studies and pharmacogenetic association studies were conducted. The signal transduction in these receptors includes amplification steps, desensitization, crosstalk, and redundancies, enabling potential mitigation of the size of the clinical effect for a single variant in a single gene. Nevertheless, convincing evidence has emerged that several variants have an impact on therapy, with certain caveats as to how the results are to be interpreted. Here we review these results for selected ARs and associated regulatory kinases relative to the pharmacogenomics of β-blocker treatment for hypertension and heart failure. We emphasize the linking of clinical results to molecular mechanisms, discuss study design limitations, and offer some recommendations for future directions.