Toxicogenomics: A five-year perspective

TOXI 109

Michael E. Burczynski, mburczynski@wyeth.com, Pharmacogenomic Biomarkers, Wyeth Research, Biomarker Laboratory, 500 Arcola Road, Collegeville, PA 19426
The pace and complexity of toxicogenomics research has accelerated tremendously since the inception of this area of biomedical inquiry less than a decade ago. Initial results demonstrated the existence of transcriptional differences following exposure of in vitro and in vivo model systems to classes of chemicals exhibiting known toxic mechanisms. On the basis of these findings, researchers have utilized increasingly complex strategies to investigate both the molecular basis of toxicity in mechanistic toxicogenomic studies and to identify toxicity at earlier time points during drug development using predictive toxicogenomic approaches. The present talk reviews the key initial observations that justified further explorations of the utility of toxicogenomic approaches, surveys the growing number of molecular assays currently employed by researchers to answer questions in this field, and anticipates additional innovations on the horizon that will maintain the field of toxicogenomics as a frontier in chemical toxicology for many years to come.