Submitted to the faculty of the Informatics Graduate Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science in Bioinformatics in the School of Informatics Indiana University May 2006 / A plethora of genomic and proteomic information was uncovered by the U.S Human Genome Project (HGP) – mostly by means of bioinformatics tools and techniques. Despite the impact that bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics were projected to have in the drug discovery and development process, the challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry, such as the high cost and the slow pace of drug development, appear to persist. Socio-economic barriers exist that mitigate the full integration of bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics into the drug discovery and development process, hence limiting the desired and expected effects.