Human genetics contributes to the understanding of disease pathophysiology and drug discovery

Abstract

Background: Today, sequencing technology has markedly reduced the cost and time needed to read the human genome than ever before. Genome-wide association studies have successfully identified a number of disease risk genes.

Contribution to understanding of disease pathophysiology: Recent advancements in genomic technology have substantially furthered our understanding of the pathophysiology of many diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Toward drug discovery and future direction: Accumulating genomic information is now expected to accelerate the discovery of novel drugs. Rapidly growing multi-dimensional information in life sciences would make human genetics significantly important in the near future.