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Chipping away at the mystery of drug responses

The Pharmacogenomics Journal volume 1, pages 161–163 (2001)Cite this article

DNA arrays can be used to discriminate closely related genes and provide a facile overview of gene expression responses relevant to drug metabolism and toxicology.

The figures are startling—in the United States alone, more than 100 000 die every year from the side effects of properly prescribed medicines, and a further two million develop serious side effects.1 The new shield to be hefted against such collateral damage is genomics. One of the most widely touted suitors for genomics has been pharmacology, where it has been welcomed as a tool to reprieve the increasingly costly process of bringing new drugs to market and remove some of the guesswork from drug prescription. Indeed, it is widely believed that pharmacogenomics, the hybrid offspring of the two disciplines, will in time lead to the holy grail of medicine—the treatment of patients on a case-by-case basis, utilizing their genotype as a means to predict which drugs will be effective and which will produce adverse outcomes. Adverse outcomes are frequently attributed to genetic variability. In some cases, drugs have no effect because patients carry out ultra-rapid clearance as a result of amplification of the genes that metabolize them. In contrast, toxic side-effects are usually considered a result of sub- or non-functional genes which are unable to metabolize certain drugs, a situation often linked to the possession of certain gene polymorphisms.

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  1. Reproductive Toxicology Division, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    J C Rockett

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  1. J C Rockett
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Correspondence to J C Rockett.

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Rockett, J. Chipping away at the mystery of drug responses. Pharmacogenomics J 1, 161–163 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.tpj.6500039

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