The Importance of Integrating SNP and Cheminformatics Resources to Pharmacogenomics

Abstract

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most frequent variants in many genes and are promising markers in relation to drug responses in pharmacogenomics studies. In this review, we emphasized the importance of the cheminformatic-related and SNP-related resources and tools and how they can improve pharmacogenomics studies. Currently, many cheminformatic resources are well developed and provide much information on drug metabolism and targeting. In parallel, there are also many well established SNP-related resources that are able to provide the information related to SNP genotyping, tag SNPs and functional classification. However, cheminformatic and SNP resources have not, as yet, been well-integrated to provide a user-friendly platform for pharmacogenomics studies. This paper presents a brief overview of the many available public resources for cheminformatics (DrugBank, PharmGKB and other drugrelated databases) and SNPs (dbSNP, HapMap, SNP500Cancer, SNP-RFLPing 2 and other SNP tools) and points out the importance of integrating cheminformatic and SNP resources for the future of pharmacogenomics.