Personal Genomes for Drug Discovery
What are the implications of personal genomes for drug discovery and development ? In the past decade, increasing amounts of dollars have been spent on drug development yet the amount of new drugs entering the market per year remains the same. Furthermore with 200 billion dollars of patents expiring in the past four years (Witty, 2010), innovative pharmaceutical companies will need to look at new approaches to discover drugs. With the human genome being sequenced in 2003, a new field of science was created and an optimistic future for drug discovery.
The implications of personal genomes for drug discovery can be significant. Now since we know the DNA sequence of our species, we can develop drugs specifically for different patient genotypes. This would mean drugs could be specifically tailored towards individuals to ensure they are getting the best treatment possible (Chadwick, 2011). Also drugs that do not work on normal patients could be, repurposed to be tailored to patients with rare genotypes. Furthermore we could use Genome-wide association studies to locate sequences that could cause variation in drug response or susceptibility to toxicity significantly improving dosage and designs of drugs (Daly, 2010). Lastly understanding polymorphisms in humans specifically in CYPs could reduce adverse drug reactions in low therapeutic index drug such as warfarin, as we could tailor the right dose to the individual possibly reducing the amount of drugs that fail due to toxicity (Huang, 2006). With the personal genome, there is a possibility for drugs to be modified to the individual however although the concept seems simple unfortunately the process is extremely complex.
With having the personal genome, doesn’t mean we can entirely focus on it to develop drugs . Environment and diet are significant factors in drug response and variability. For example, comparing micro biomes of Caucasians and Japanese it was shown that one had significantly more expression of
The implications of personal genomes for drug discovery can be significant. Now since we know the DNA sequence of our species, we can develop drugs specifically for different patient genotypes. This would mean drugs could be specifically tailored towards individuals to ensure they are getting the best treatment possible (Chadwick, 2011). Also drugs that do not work on normal patients could be, repurposed to be tailored to patients with rare genotypes. Furthermore we could use Genome-wide association studies to locate sequences that could cause variation in drug response or susceptibility to toxicity significantly improving dosage and designs of drugs (Daly, 2010). Lastly understanding polymorphisms in humans specifically in CYPs could reduce adverse drug reactions in low therapeutic index drug such as warfarin, as we could tailor the right dose to the individual possibly reducing the amount of drugs that fail due to toxicity (Huang, 2006). With the personal genome, there is a possibility for drugs to be modified to the individual however although the concept seems simple unfortunately the process is extremely complex.
With having the personal genome, doesn’t mean we can entirely focus on it to develop drugs . Environment and diet are significant factors in drug response and variability. For example, comparing micro biomes of Caucasians and Japanese it was shown that one had significantly more expression of