Integrating pharmacokinetics knowledge into a drug ontology: as an extension to support pharmacogenomics

The newly developed U.S. Common Medication Information Infrastructure was used as a basis to capture and formally express the properties of drugs relevant to research and the clinical application of pharmacogenomics. Two associated taxonomies within the model, Mechanism of Action and Physiologic Effect, were enriched to accommodate pharmacogenomic use-cases; the 4,000 active ingredients in the VA NDF-RT drug file were related to the enhanced taxonomies. Pharmacokinetics were independently modeled for pharmacogenomics and tested against thirty-one high-profile drugs to demonstrate our approach.