Introduction:

Pharmacogenomics, as part of precision medicine, guarantees patients´ optimal treatment based on their genetic profile.

Objective:

To describe the principles of pharmacogenomics and its application in daily clinical practice.

Materials and Methods:

A critical review of pharmacogenomics was carried out in SciELO, MedLine/PubMed/PMC, Scopus databases and the Cuban Virtual Health Library using Spanish and English descriptors such as: farmacogenómica/pharmacogenomics, farmacogenética/pharmacogenetics, medicina personalizada/personalized medicine and medicina de precisión/precision medicine. The articles were searched and located during the period between November 2019 and January 2020. The articles published between 2008 and January 2020 were selected.

Results:

The principles of pharmacogenomics are based on the knowledge of the human genome that allows the determination of the genetic profile of patients and the best response to drug treatment with a minimum of adverse reactions. It is applied in different medical specialties such as Oncology, Cardiology, Internal Medicine and Endocrinology. The most studied pharmacogenetic biomarkers include: CACNA1S, RYR1, CYP2D6, SLCO1B1, CYP2C19, F5, CFTR, CYP2C9, CYP4F2, VKORC1, HLA-B, UGT1A1, IFNL3, CYP3A5, TPMT, G6PD, HLA-A, BRCA1, DPYD, RARG, SLC28A3, TPMT and UGT1A6.

Conclusions:

Pharmacogenetic biomarkers are valuable tools for the identification of genes involved in the drug response. They are very important in the application of personalized medicine which is intended to improve the response to drugs and avoid or minimize adverse effects. However, substantial challenges remain in respect of making it a frequently used tool in medical practice.

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