Toxicogenomics in drug discovery and development: mechanistic analysis of compound/class-dependent effects using the DrugMatrix database.

A range of genomics technologies are increasingly becoming integrated with existing scientific disciplines to broaden and strengthen existing capabilities and open new avenues of research in drug discovery and development. Examples of these new research fields are proteomics, pharmacogenomics, metabolomics and toxicogenomics. Here we review the application of toxicogenomics to improve the evaluation of drug safety, mechanism of action and toxicity in the drug discovery and development process.