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Abstract
The concept of gene is in crisis. Does it affect pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics? It is well known that the efficacy of certain drugs varies from individual to individual, depending in part on variation in the genes that encode drug metabolizing enzymes or target proteins. Like many other branches of the biomedical sciences, pharmacogenetics has been invigorated by recent advances in genomics, which has led to expectations that the safety and efficacy of medicines will soon be notably improved by persona- lization of therapeutics based on genetic data. Here we discuss how the crisis of the molecular gene concept affects the premise traced by pharmaco- genetics and how the sprouting of new paradigms in molecular and developmental biology points out the impossibility of reducing biological complexity to a DNA strand and single nucleotide polymorphism, affectingthe main aim of pharmacotherapy which is to provide the right drug for the right patient at the right dose.
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Copyright (c) 2006 Vanessa Fontana Vanessa Fontana, Ana Cristina Puhl, Fernanda Pedrini, Miriam Falkenberg, Jaime Cofre Jaime Cofre
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