Individual response to drug therapy: Bases and study approaches

Genomic variation largely explains the differences in an individual's response to drug treatments. A field of genomic medicine focuses on the identification of genetic polymorphisms and gene mutations involved in the development and progression of disease. Another part focuses on the development of genetic tests to accompany medical prescriptions, to predict how certain patients respond to therapy with a given pharmacological agent. The field of predicting responses to drugs has different strategies and methods, among which we find: the use of liver microsomes, cell models, monitoring of probe drugs, assays with recombinant proteins and recently the use of microarray platforms or DNAchips.