Significance of Pharmacogenomics in Precision Medicine.

Precision medicine-a term widely used in modern medicine-emphasizes the goal to overcome still existing limitations of therapeutic interventions by tailoring medical treatments to individual patient characteristics. Pharmacogenetics was one of the first scientific approaches taking molecular biomarkers into consideration of diagnostics and therapeutic decisions. This issue of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics on the significance of pharmacogenomics inprecision medicine discusses the ongoing challenges on different levels. Access and usage of clinical biobanks, gain of specific information of medication from electronic health records, and tools to combine clinical and molecular information in order to develop advanced clinical decision support are subjects of numerous research initiatives. Implementation in clinical routine, however, remains the subject of evaluation of clinical- and cost-effectiveness, so far.