Pharmacogenomics and Proteomics: Enabling the Practice of Personalized Medicine

The new "molecular economy," fundamentally driven by understanding molecules and their interactions, has spawned an exciting discipline referred to as "clinical" pharmacogenomics or pharmacogenetics. Combining this discipline with our knowledge of protein function and regulation (proteomics), a more complete understanding of systems physiology is achieved-giving rise to a "systems biology" perspective. From this new perspective, the practice of medicine is becoming more dependent on the application of biomarkers-genomics, proteomics, and other functional biomarkers-toward personalized medicine, thus allowing a practical convergence to optimize matching of the right patient and the right diagnosis with the right drug and the right dose at the right time. To enable the practice of personalized medicine with an understanding of pharmacogenomics and proteomics, this book reviews:

• the fundamentals of molecular biology and general clinical implications important in understanding fundamental concepts, a general review of ethical considerations, methods of predicting response using artificial networks, regulatory issues, reimbursement, quality assurance considerations, and future market analysis;
• methodologies that merge the disciplines of pharmacogenetics with those of proteomics, metabolomics, and metabonomics;
• specific clinical applications of pharmacogenetics of major drug groups, specialties, and diseases, and how they are linked to potential clinical management; and
• selected biotechnologies relevant to the application of clinical pharmacogenomics and proteomics to clinical practice.

As the new molecular economy emerges, this text provides the basic pharmacogenomic and proteomic tools needed to understand this new, rapidly evolving, and exciting discipline.