Europe holds its own

London/UK – Although the USA remains the world leader in advanced genomics and proteomics research, Europe is having a good deal of success in this field, thanks to government funding and the presence of large pharmaceutical companies, according to a recent report from business consultancy Frost & Sullivan. Current research aims to go beyond the realm of human genome sequencing to expand the list of identified proteins and genes. However, several issues surrounding drug target identification and validation need to be resolved. For instance, not only is the process extremely time-consuming, but lack of standardization has led to reproducibility issues. Moreover, since genetic variations elicit varied drug responses in different people, understanding the impact of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) also becomes necessary. “These target validation bottlenecks need to be eased with faster, easier-to-use analytical systems,” says Katherine Austin, a Technical Insights Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. In pharmacogenomics studies, which are used to predict an individual patient’s response to a specific drug, researchers need to identify and analyse sequence differences and their involvement in drug response. The complexity of the human proteome is also a significant hurdle in terms of resolution and purification of protein mixtures. Sophisticated techniques need to be developed to separate proteins.