Drug News Perspect 2002 Nov;15(9):558-567
Kirstein-Grossman I, Beckmann JS, Lancet D, Miller A.
The goal of pharmacogenetics is to identify "genetic fingerprints" that may predict a patient's response to pharmaceutical treatment.
The use of pharmacogenetics replaces the trial-and-error strategy, which governs much of our clinical decision-making regarding treatment allocation in current medical practice, with individually tailored therapy.
We review a pharmacogenetic research model, which implements high-throughput single nucleotide polymorphism technology to establish the correlation between drug-responsiveness and genetic polymorphisms of Copaxone(R)-treated multiple sclerosis patients.
Implementation of similar pharmacogenetic approaches may promote the development of personalized medicine in multiple sclerosis as well as in other diseases.