The research in my laboratory focuses on the pharmacogenomics of anti-neoplastic agents. Pharmacogenomics is a study of the role of inheritance in the variation of drug response, either efficacy or toxicity. Most anti-neoplastic drugs have narrow therapeutic indices, therefore, treatment with these drugs can result in significant, sometimes, life-threatening drug-induced toxicity. At the same time, the therapeutic response to those agents are not very high. For example, one interest in our lab is the proteasome inhibitors, which are used to treat refractory multiple myeloma. It achieves only 30-35% response rates, which is already a great success when compared with "conventional" therapy. It is important to predict which sub-populations will response in the front in order to achieve better therapeutic effect and to avoid toxicity. That is the goal of pharmacogenomics and the future of medicine individualized therapy.

My pharmacogenomic research program will move beyond just focusing on drug metabolism, to focusing on drug effects, including "drug targets" and downstream signaling from these targets. The focus will be to identify and understand the role of genetic variation in the response to drug therapy, either efficacy or toxicity, and eventually to translate that knowledge to clinic. Therefore, two major activities will be ongoing in the laboratory. One is to understand the functional and mechanistic effects of those genetic variation and the other is to serve as a "bridge" from the bench to the bedside through involvement in clinical translational pharmacogenomic studies. The program is part of the activities in the Mayo Cancer Center and also is part of the Mayo-NIH Pharmacogenomic Research Network. It involves many interdisciplines, including genetic statistic, epidemiology and oncology such as hemotology oncology.