Personalised Medicine Through GPCR Pharmacogenomics

The explosion of biomedical data such as in genomics, structure biology and pharmacology can provide new opportunities to improve our understanding of human physiology and disease. Understanding the magnitude of response to a given treatment at an individual level is one of the most important and long-standing challenges in personalized medicine and pharmacogenomics. A great deal of effort has been placed on understanding variation in drug transport and metabolism. However, little is known about how variability in receptor drug targets affects treatment regimens. G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the single most prevalent drug target family. Elucidating the spectrum and impact of how a GPCR variant influences ligand binding, signaling and, ultimately, therapeutic effect is vital and could serve as the next important step for understanding variability in drug response.

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain the conceptual principles underlying pharmacogenomics.

2. Identify challenges and opportunities in personalized medicine.

3. Explain current approaches in understanding drug variability originating from GPCR mutations.