Pharmacogenetics: past, present and future

The subject area of pharmacogenetics, also known as pharmacogenomics, has a long history. Research in this area has led to fundamental discoveries, which have helped our understanding of the reasons why individuals differ in the way they handle drugs, and ultimately in the way they respond to drugs, either in terms of efficacy or toxicity. However, not much of this knowledge has been translated into clinical practice, most drug–gene associations that have some evidence of clinical validity have not progressed to clinical settings. Advances in genomics since 2000, including the ready availability of data on the variability of the human genome, have provided us with unprecedented opportunities to understand variability in drug responses, and the opportunity to incorporate this into patient care. This is only likely to occur with a systematic approach that evaluates and overcomes the different translational gaps in taking a biomarker from discovery to clinical practice. In this article, I explore the history of pharmacogenetics, appraise the current state of research in this area, and finish off with suggestions for progressing in the field in the future.