Pharmacogenomics in asthma therapy: where are we and where do we go?

The response to drug treatment in asthma is a complex trait and is markedly variable even in patients with apparently similar clinical features. Pharmaco-genomics, which is the study of variations of human genome characteristics as related to drug response, can play a role in asthma therapy. Both a traditional candidate-gene approach to conducting genetic association studies and genome-wide association studies have provided an increasing list of genes and variants associated with the three major classes of asthma medications: β2-agonists, inhaled corticosteroids, and leukotriene modifiers. Moreover, a recent integrative, systems-level approach has offered a promising opportunity to identify important pharmacogenomics loci in asthma treatment. However, we are still a long way away from making this discipline directly relevant to patients. The combination of network modeling, functional validation, and integrative omics technologies will likely be needed to move asthma pharmacogenomics closer to clinical relevance.