Will the application of pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics be the key to more sophisticated new medicine based therapies?
The medicines currently marketed reach only about 10% to 20% of the body’s possible drug targets, or 400 to 500 protein receptors and enzymes out of an estimated 5.000. In the next twenty years, all 5.000 targets will be accessible. Genomics is expected to lead to the identification of thousands of new targets for development. Whether these will be amenable to small molecule intervention or require protein and nucleic acid based therapies remains to be seen. To overcome the difficulty of biological and chemical diversity, the message is „creativity is everything”. The application of pharmacogenomics and pharmacogenetics in drug development holds great promise to shed scientific light on the often risky and costly process of drug development, and to provide greater confidence about the risks and benefits of drugs in specific populations. Pharmacogenomics’ promise lies in its potential ability to individualize therapy by predicting which individuals have a greater chance of benefit or ri
