Personalized Medicine Through GPCR Pharmacogenomics

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.