Internal Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

A Systems Biology Approach to Pharmacogenomic Discovery

Wei Zhang

The individual response to therapeutic treatments is likely to be a complex trait that is controlled by various genetic and non-genetic factors. In an ideal world of personalized medicine, the information about a patient's genetic make-up or gene expression profile would be considered by physicians together with other clinical information (e.g., age, gender) to tailor medical care for both maximizing effective therapy and avoiding adverse effects. The challenge for personalized medicine is particularly urgent for cancer chemotherapy. Clinically, anticancer drugs often present a narrow therapeutic index, indicating that small changes in dosage could cause severe toxic response (e.g., neurotoxicity and nephrotoxicity) [1,2] with the extreme end of complication resulting in fatality. Therefore, understanding the comprehensive relationships between genetic/non-genetic factors and drug response is a critical step toward the realization of personalized medical care in clinical oncology.