Systematic, agnostic study of genetic predictors of toxicity from anti-cancer therapy

The burden of chemotherapy-associated toxicity is well known, but there are relatively few tools that increase the precision of anti-cancer drug prescription. A group of researchers from the University of Oxford, UK proposed a shift in emphasis from the focused study of polymorphisms in drug metabolic pathways in small sets of patients to broader agnostic analyses to systematically correlate germline genetic variants with adverse events in large, well-defined cancer populations. The authors advocate that, whenever possible, randomised trials of novel antineoplastic agents should function as vehicles for a genome-wide exploration of germline determinants of toxicity. The use of a blood sample should also enable all patients to be analysed, rather than a subset. Read more here.