Pharmacogenetics research network and knowledge base: 1st annual scientific meeting.

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health recently established a collaborative group of scientists, called the Pharmacogenetics Research Network. Central to the network is a shared, state-of-the-art data repository, the Pharmacogenetics Knowledge Base (PharmGKB), which is housed at Stanford University. Network investigators deposit pharmacogenetic data into PharmGKB, after all individually identifying information has been removed. Contents of PharmGKB will be freely accessible to the scientific community, with the goal of forging new links between gene variation and drug response. An open scientific meeting was held recently to introduce the research community to the network and to invite academic and industry-based researchers to deposit data into PharmGKB. Featured at the meeting were summaries of research progress to date, as well as discussions of issues intimately related to pharmacogenetics research, namely ethics and relations with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.