Review article

Pharmacogenetics of cytotoxic therapy in colorectal carcinoma

Viktorija Erdeljić-Turk

Abstract

Colorectal cancer is a relatively common tumor with incidence that has been increasing during recent decades. Despite the rapid advances in treatment of colorectal cancer, the best way to combine and sequence all available drugs to optimize treatment is not yet established. The majority of cytotoxic drugs used in therapy of colorectal cancer have a dose related effect and narrow therapeutic index. Hence, dosing of cytotoxic drugs is considered very important. Current modalities for therapy and dose selection give restricted possibilities to equalise inter-individual variations which are dependent on physiological, genetic and environmental factors. In this article, an overview of current possibilities of personalized medicine in therapy of colorectal cancer is presented. This includes review of the most important gene polymorphisms important for safety and efficacy of cytotoxic therapy in colorectal cancer, and evaluation of their importance for the current clinical practice. Despite raising knowledge, providing individual treatment with low toxicity and significant benefits is still an unsolved problem. Reasons for this are the lack of knowledge on distribution of these polymorphisms in the population, importance of non-genetic factors, price of genetic testing and still limited data from controlled clinical trials confirming the clinical usefulness of pharmacogenetic testing. Although the initial costs of cancer management and personalized medicine may be high, in the future they may result in significant benefits from both a clinical and economical perspective.

Keywords

colorectal cancer; pharmacogenetics; biomarkers; personalised medicine

Hrčak ID:

139051

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/139051

Publication date:

14.5.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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