Description
Pharmacogenetics and individualized therapy is a rapidly evolving field that is likely to have important consequences for clinical practice in the coming decades. This book is aimed at a general audience including advanced undergraduate and graduate students in medicine, pharmacy, pharmacology, and other related disciplines as well
as researchers based in either academia or the pharmaceutical industry. Some familiarity with basic pharmacology and genetics is assumed.
This book is organized in five parts. Part I describes the basic principles of pharmacogenetics including factors relevant to drug disposition (phase I and phase II metabolizing enzymes, and drug transporters) and the role of pharmacodynamics (drug targets).
Part II includes discussions of state-of-the art pharmacogenetics in many important therapeutic areas [cardiovascular, psychiatry, cancer, asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), adverse drug reactions, transplantation, inflammatory bowel disease, pain medication].
Part III describes ethical and related issues in implementing pharmacogenetics into clinical practice.
In Part IV important developments in the techology supporting pharmacogenetics research are discussed. More recent developments in genotyping techniques provide opportunities for genotyping over 1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms in many patients at affordable prices. Further developments in analysis techniques provide investigators with the opportunity to consider gene–environment and epistatic interactions as well as the possibility of whole-genome sequencing.
Part V discusses the impact of pharmacogenetics in the pharmaceutical industry and also the role that pharmacogenetics currently plays in the registration process.
It has been a privilege to interact with the distinguished expert authors who have provided chapters for this book, and we would like to express our sincere gratitude to them for their excellent contributions.We also wish to thank Lisa Gilhuijs-Pederson, PhD for assistance in editing this book.
ANN K. DALY, PhD