Abstract

Pharmacogenomics is a science that examines the inherited variations in genes that dictate drug response and explores the ways these variations can be used to predict whether a patient will have a good, bad, or no response at all to a drug. It refers to the general study of all of the many different genes that determine drug behavior. It could also guide companies in designing clinical trials that would more definitively prove drug efficacy, in turn decreasing the time, costs, and risks of drug development. In the clinical setting, pharmacogenomics will help physicians to better define the long-term health risks that patients face, diagnose the stage of patient’s diseases more precisely and predict patients’ responsiveness to specific drugs more accurately or the likelihood for adverse events.

Key words: Pharmacogenomics, biomarkers, gene variations