This meeting was held in Los Angeles on November 3 and 4, 2003. The historic Millenium Biltmore Hotel was the venue for presentations on the pharmacogenomics of drugs used commonly in clinical practice, latest results of gene mapping from deCode genetics, progress on the Hap Map and discussion about the progress of the search for newer drug targets using genomic means. There was a combination of review presentations and research presentation in specific areas. For brevity purposes, only the first author is quoted in the following meeting description.
Magnus Ingelman-Sundberg (Sweden) opened the conference with a keynote address, which summarized existing knowledge in pharmacogenetics. He covered the correlation between genetic polymorphisms in specific genes of certain drug-metabolizing enzymes and the ability to metabolize the drug rapidly or not. Specifically, some people metabolize drugs very slowly and are called poor metabolizers. Those with normal rapid processing of the drug are called extensive metabolizers with intermediate metabolizers having a less efficient rate of metabolism and ultrarapid metabolizers having a very rapid metabolism rate. For some genes, such as CYP2D6, these categorizations can be predicted by the number of active metabolizing genes an individual has. On the other hand, CYP3A4 has very few functional polymorphisms in the gene that affect function of the gene despite the fact that the protein made by this gene is involved in the metabolism of about 70% of drugs currently used. Recently, it has been found that CYP3A4 is differentially spliced to produce a hybrid protein of CYP3A4 and CYP3A43. One needs to study RNA to understand this. He contrasted the knowledge of pharmacogenetics of drug-metabolizing genes with the paucity of knowledge relating to the pharmacogenetics of drug transporters and drug receptors. He also suggested that there is a great need for prospective clinical studies relating to drug doses and drug choice based on predictive genotyping.
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