PHARMACOGENOMICS

Pharmacogenomicsis the new stream of pharmacology which tells us how an individual's genetic inheritance affects the body's response to drugs. This noting but the combination pharmaceuticals and genetics aimed at the betterment of human health.

Pharmacogenomics holds the promise that drugs might one day be tailor-made and personalized to each person's according to the individuals own genetic makeup. Environment, diet, age, lifestyle, and state of health all can influence a person's reaction to medicines, but understanding an individual's genetic makeup is the sole purpose of creating personalized drugs with greater efficiency and safety.

Pharmacogenomics combines conventional pharmaceutical sciences such as biochemistry with understanding of genes, proteins, and single nucleotide polymorphisms. By doing so, pharmacogenomics aims to optimize drug therapy, with respect to the patients' genotype, which would result in maximum effectiveness and minimum side effects.

BENEFITS OF PHARMACOGENOMICS

Advanced Powerful Medicines

Pharmaceutical companies will be able to fashion drugs based on the proteins, enzymes, and RNA molecules associated with genes and different diseases. This would lead to the manufacture of drugs that are more targeted on the specific disease. This accuracy not only will maximize restorative effects but also decrease damage to nearby healthy cells.

Better and Safer Drugs.

Instead of trying any empirical methods for treating the disease, doctors will be able to analyze a patient's genetic profile and prescribe the best available drug therapy from the beginning. This could avoid unnecessary guesswork and adverse effects on the patients and also will speed recovery time and increase safety as the likelihood of adverse reactions is eliminated. Unwanted death and hospitalizations can be avoided because of this type of drug.

Appropriate Drug Dosages

A conventional method of giving dosages to the patients was based on the severity of the disease and age with weight also included. But now this can be replaces by seeing the persons genetics. It can also be seen how well the body processes the medicine and the time it takes to metabolize it. This will maximize the therapy's value and decrease the probability of overdose.

Advanced Screening for Disease
prior knowledge of one's genetic code will allow a person to make adequate lifestyle and environmental changes at an early age so as to avoid or lessen the severity of a genetic disease. Likewise, advance knowledge about the disease vulnerability will lead to careful monitoring, and treatments can be given at the most appropriate stage to maximize the therapy.

Better Vaccines

Vaccines made of genetic material, like DNA or RNA, proves to be a better vaccine without ant risks involved. They will activate the immune system but will be unable to cause infections. They will be economical, secure, easy to store, and capable of being engineered to carry several strains of a pathogen at once.

Improvements in the Drug Discovery and Approval Process.

Pharmaceutical companies will be able to discover possible therapies more easily using genome targets. Previously failed drug candidates may be rejuvenated as their genome is studied and known. The drug approval process should be made easy as trials are targeted for specific genetic population groups only promising greater degrees of success. The cost and risk of clinical trials will be abridged by targeting only those persons capable of responding to a drug.

Decrease in the Overall Cost of Health Care

Decreases in the number of adverse drug reactions, the number of failed drug trials, the time it takes to get a drug approved, the length of time patients are on medication, the number of medications patients must take to find an effective therapy, the effects of a disease on the body (through early detection), and an increase in the range of possible drug targets will promote a net decrease in the cost of health care.

APPLICATIONS

• Pharmacogenomics can be applied in curing disease like cancer, cardio vascular disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorders, HIV, tuberculosis, asthma, and diabetes.

• In cancer treatment, pharmacogenomics tests are used to make out which patients are most likely to respond to certain cancer drugs. This will lead the physicians and care givers to better manage medication selection and side effect amelioration.


BARRIERS TO PHARMACOGENOMICS PROGRESS.

Pharmacogenomics is a developing research field that is still in its formative years. Following are the barrier of this newly emerged field:

Complexities of finding gene variations that affect drug response -

Complication arises as we have limited knowledge of which genes are involved with each drug response. Since many genes are likely to influence responses, obtaining the big picture and a focused impact of gene variations is highly time-consuming and complicated.

Limited drug alternatives - Only one or two approved drugs may be accessible for treatment of a particular condition. If patients have gene variations that prevent them using these drugs, they may be left without any substitute for treatment.

Cost concerns - production of such kind of drugs may be very costly and that in turn will only benefit a small group of population.

Educating healthcare providers - All those who prescribe theses drugs should have better understanding of genetics which is not always possible. So educating the physicians, regardless of specialty will be another big task.


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