A recent study has demonstrated that the expression of ACE and other target genes is enhanced by ACE-associated kinases and, therefore, ACE might have an influence on signal transduction mechanisms in the CNS and the periphery.34 Future aspects: from pharmacogenetics to pharmacogenomics Although the above findings in the field of pharmacogenetics Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical are important, none of the positive

results can fully account for the heterogeneity in response to AD treatment. Moreover, due to the complexity of drug response, single mutations in one gene are unlikely to cause the continuous variability in response. The pharmacogenomic approach uses recent advances in experimental genomics and proteomics (the investigation of all the proteins in a cell or organism), together with the available sequence information of the Human Genome Project. These developments will not only enable genome-wide screens of several millions of SNPs without the use of specific hypotheses and a candidate gene strategy but also functional investigations of gene and/or Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical protein expression over the whole genome or proteome.35 Although most of the data available so far derived from animal studies, the finding of Landgrebe et al,36 who Blebbistatin manufacturer performed Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a gene expression analysis in mice

treated with paroxetine and mirtazapine, is remarkable. The authors found that both drugs led to a downregulation of four common genes, thus suggesting that ADs with different pharmacological principles of action can share the same molecular targets even through the primary pathways on which they act are different. This finding underlines the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical recent hypothesis that the initial mechanisms of action trigger subsequent events in the signal transduction cascade and, finally, protein expression. Although all the above results have to be replicated and validated in further experiments and also analyzed in vivo, there is no doubt that large-scale gene and/or protein expression analysis will be performed in Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the near future in many laboratories by using all these rapidly growing technologies of functional genomics.

The expected results will provide new insights in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. Such detailed knowledge will have profound effects on the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of these diseases. Conclusion Although many investigations have shown Thymidine kinase that genetic variations in target proteins influence their interaction with ADs, the results are still not conclusive and far from the original concept of tailoring the drug regimen to an individual’s predisposition and predicting a patient’s response to therapeutic agents. We have to be aware that the phenotype of drug response is highly complex, representing a classical example of the outcome of gene-gene or gene-environment interactions.