Pharmacogenomics: current status and future perspectives

Inter-individual variability in drug response, be it efficacy or safety, is common and likely to become an increasing problem globally given the growing elderly population requiring treatment. Reasons for this inter-individual variability include genomic factors, an area of study called pharmacogenomics. With genotyping technologies now widely available and decreasing in cost, implementing pharmacogenomics into clinical practice - widely regarded as one of the initial steps in mainstreaming genomic medicine - is currently a focus in many countries worldwide. However, major challenges of implementation lie at the point of delivery into health-care systems, including the modification of current clinical pathways coupled with a massive knowledge gap in pharmacogenomics in the health-care workforce. Pharmacogenomics can also be used in a broader sense for drug discovery and development, with increasing evidence suggesting that genomically defined targets have an increased success rate during clinical development.