| Use of SNPs in drug development: The SNPs can also have importance in action of a particular therapeutic agent. Currently, no method is present to predict the reaction of any individual against a medication i.e a treatment which is proven effective in one patient may not work in others. Even some patients may experience the side effects. As a futuristic tool, SNPs can be used to predict the possible behaviour of an individual for particular therapeutic agent by analyzing his SNP profile, may be referred as "personalized medicine". An overview of application of SNPs in Human genome and personalized medicine is given in Fig.3
Figure 3: An overview of application of SNPs in Human genome and personalized medicine.
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The SNP profiling will be a gem-stone in pharmacogenomics, the genome based drug development. It will lead to development of the right drug, to the right person, in the right dose, at the right time.
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SNPs and Human Genome Project
In 1998, during Human Genome Project, several attempts were made to identify the human SNP profile with an aim to develop technologies for rapid, large-scale identification of SNPs and other DNA sequence variations, develop methods for identification of SNPs, identify common variations in coding region of a gene and develop a SNP map of around 100,000 genes.
The use of SNP is not limited to the above applications but there are some other applications as following:
- SNPs are used for identification and forensics
- SNPs are used for mapping and genome-wide association studies of complex diseases
- SNPs are used for immigration & citizenship in the UK
- SNPs are used to predict specific genetic traits
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