Blood lipids are important modifiable risk factors for coronary heart disease and various drugs have been developed to target lipid fractions. Considerable efforts have been made to identify genetic variants that modulate responses to drugs in the hope of optimizing their use. Pharmacogenomics and new biotechnologies now allow for meaningful integration of human genetic findings and therapeutic development for increased efficiency and precision of lipid-lowering drugs. Polygenic predictors of disease risk are also changing how patient populations can be stratified, enabling targeted therapeutic interventions to patients more likely to derive the highest benefit, marking a shift from single variant to genomic approaches in pharmacogenomics.
Keywords: CETP; PCSK9; cholesterol; dalcetrapib; drug development; pharmacogenomics; triglycerides.