Pharmacogenetics and the Pharmaceutical Industry

The detailed knowledge of the human genome has not fulfilled its promise as yet. It seems fair to say that we are far from treating existing diseases by therapeutic interventions developed on the basis of genetic knowledge. However, pharmacogenetics has shown to be useful in improving our understanding of pharmacotherapy. Industry is starting to embed this knowledge in the design of innovative drugs and there are three important areas of interest: safety, efficacy and target identification. Application of pharmacogenetics e.g. in patient selection are leading to the direction of more personalised medicine. The future will bring more of such applications. However, current knowledge also leads to a more integrated approach of pharmacogenetics as part of systems biology, providing an even more complete image of reality surrounding disease and therapy, including for example environmental factors and behaviour. In addition, collaborative efforts with academic partners are very much welcomed by the pharmaceutical industry and are expected to have a synergistic effect on progression in this field.