What is PharmGKB?

PharmGKB is an NIH-funded resource that provides information about how human genetic variation affects response to medications. PharmGKB collects, curates and disseminates knowledge about clinically actionable gene-drug associations and genotype-phenotype relationships. When using PharmGKB, you will see different types of information. These are detailed in the sections below.
Prescribing Information
Drug Label Annotations
Genotype Selection Interface
Curated Pathways
Clinical Annotations
Variant Annotations
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Variant Annotations

Variant annotations are summaries of an association between a single genetic variant(opens in new window) and a drug response, as reported in a single publication. PharmGKB curators add these associations to the website when they come across them in published literature.

Scientists from around the world routinely publish articles showing how a particular genetic change affects how individuals respond to a drug(opens in new window), such as whether they have an adverse reaction or respond well. These articles are indexed on PubMed(opens in new window). PharmGKB curators use PubMed to find articles that contain pharmacogenomic(opens in new window) information then add that information to PharmGKB. PharmGKB uses an algorithm(opens in new window) to assess certain features of variant annotations and assign a score reflecting the combined attributes of a particular variant annotation. Variant annotation scores are used in the calculation of clinical annotation scores(opens in new window).