[2] The main goal of PharmGKB is to aid researchers in understanding how variation in a person’s genetic makeup affects how he or she responds to a drug, a field known as pharmacogenomics or pharmacogenetics (PGx).

In order to achieve this goal, PharmGKB manually curates PGx information from the primary literature, and then stores it in the knowledge base.

[3] In order to capitalize on cases where strong PGx literature evidence exists, PharmGKB cofounded the Clinical Pharmacogenetic Implementation Consortium (CPIC), an organization responsible for the creation and dissemination of peer-reviewed, freely available genotype-based drug-dosing guidelines for clinicians.

Curators review past and present literature and add any studies containing PGx-relevant results to the knowledge base through these variant annotations.

All variant annotations contain a standardized sentence, which allows results to be easily compared and contrasted between studies throughout the knowledge base.

[1][8] PharmGKB provides PGx-based drug dosing guidelines from CPIC, as well as The Royal Dutch Association for the Advancement of Pharmacy Pharmacogenetics Working Group (DWPG) and professional societies such as The American College of Rheumatology.

[11] CPIC consists of members of NIH Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN), PharmGKB staff, and experts in PGx and medicine.

The goal of CPIC is to create freely-available, peer-reviewed drug-dosing guidelines for clinicians who have access to pre-emptive genetic testing results.