The goal of
personalized medicine is to provide individualized treatment and to predict the clinical outcome of different treatments in different patients.
Pharmacogenomics is one of the core elements in personalized medicine. The basic concept is that inter individual variability in drug response is a consequence of multiple factors, including genomics, epigenomics, the environment and a patient's characteristics, such as gender, age and/or concomitant medication. Thirty years ago, drug response was found to be altered by genetic
polymorphisms in drug-metabolizing
enzymes (for example, the cytochrome P450 2D6 and the thiopurine S-methyltransferase), yet valid and predictive
biomarkers for therapeutic effects and/or for avoiding severe side effects are lacking for more than 90% of
drugs currently used in clinical practice.
Pharmacogenomics in recent years has used a new generation of technologies known as 'omics' approaches that has led to a revolution in the understanding of disease susceptibility and pathophysiology, providing enormous potential for novel therapeutic strategies. It is beyond doubt that
pharmacogenomics promotes the development of targeted therapies, as was demonstrated by the approval earlier this year of the drug ivacaftor by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency for the treatment of a subset of
cystic fibrosis patients. Ivacaftor is approved only for
cystic fibrosis patients bearing the specific G551D genetic variant in the
cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene, which encodes a protein that regulates chloride and water transport in the body and is defective in the disease. Ivacaftor targets the CFTR protein, increases its activity, and consequently improves lung function. The information can be published in our peer reviewed journal with impact factors and are calculated using citations not only from research
articles but also review
articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, short communications, and case reports. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate the impact
factor and try to increase their number rapidly. Impact
factor plays a major role for the particular journal. Journal with higher impact
factor is considered to be more important than other ones.
Relevant Topics in Medical Sciences
