”5 The door to making such informed individual predictions

was opened when, in the mid 1950s, the link between genetic makeup and drug metabolism was identified6; ie, when it was discovered that the causes for individual variation in drug response could be genetic.7 More precisely, when the extent to which the causes of diverse drug response could be genetic was realized, for the genetic determination of the capacity of an organism to respond to its environment Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical has long been accepted in biology,8 including the implication of enzymes in the detoxification of foreign substances.9 In addition to nongenetic and environmental causes and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical lifestyle factors, eg, age, gender, family- support, good diet, care in following prescriptions, etc, variations in DNA sequence among individuals (genetic polymorphisms) were also found to be involved in the response to drug therapies.10 Accordingly-, knowledge of the individual genome became strongly relevant to drug

prescription.11 Increasing knowledge Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of the human genome has given rise to the development of genomic medicine, genetic testing, and also helped in diagnosing some unusual disorders; still, the impact of genetics in medicine during the 20th century was relatively modest.12 The recent development of new technologies for genetic testing has promoted new studies in how drugs and genes interact with potentials for much larger impact.13 Pharmacogenetics (a term coined in the 1950s14) is the study of individual variations in drug response due to heredity. It can be distinguished from phamiacogenomics, a KU-55933 broader term denoting all genes in the genome that may influence drug response, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical but the terms Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical are often used interchangeably.15 There is considerable hope that new and more effective treatments for numerous

mental disorders can result if drugs are developed that specifically target the responsible genes, eg, schizophrenia susceptibility genes.16 If drug prescription can be personalized, ie, tailored to suit the individual’s genetic makeup,17 this holds promise of enormous benefits in terms of, notably, personalized medication with adjusted therapeutic doses, predictable drug responses, reduced ADRs, and personal health planning.18 It should be noted that personalization and individualization, depending on nearly how the concepts are interpreted, need not mean the same thing, and that they are in this context a matter of degree. Here, “personalized medication” can logically, but not realistically, be interpreted as medication developed to suit the singular individual. The realistic interpretation is that personalized medication is “relatively individualized” in the sense of drugs having a more limited group specificity than the earlier “one size fits all” drugs.