Personalised prescribing for asthma--is pharmacogenetics the answer?

An individual's response to anti-asthma medication is likely to arise from a complex interaction between social, environmental and inherited factors. Studies indicate that genetic factors may account for 60-80% of the heterogeneity in treatment responsiveness in asthmatics. Identifying the genetic variants responsible may potentially lead to the development of novel treatments, improved effectiveness in the use of existing treatments and better prediction of efficacy in phase II and III trials.

Identification of the autoantigen SART-1 as a candidate gene for the development of atopy.

The possibility that immune responses to autoantigens may contribute to the development of atopic disease has been largely ignored. In this paper, we describe the chromosomal localization of the gene for squamous cell carcinoma-associated reactive antigen for cytotoxic T cells (SART-1). The SART-1 gene localized to a region of 11q12-13 showing strong linkage to atopy in previous studies.