“Omics” in pharmaceutical research: overview, applications, challenges, and future perspectives

In the post-genomic era, biological studies are characterized by the rapid development and wide application of a series of “omics” technologies, including genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, lipidomics, cytomics, metallomics, ionomics, interactomics, and phenomics. These “omics” are often based on global analyses of biological samples using high through-put analytical approaches and bioinformatics and may provide new insights into biological phenomena. In this paper, the development and advances in these omics made in the past decades are reviewed, especially genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics; the applications of omics technologies in pharmaceutical research are then summarized in the fields of drug target discovery, toxicity evaluation, personalized medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine; and finally, the limitations of omics are discussed, along with the future challenges associated with the multi-omics data processing, dynamics omics analysis, and analytical approaches, as well as amenable solutions and future prospects.