Germline Pharmacogenetics of Paclitaxel for Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Paclitaxel is a highly effective chemotherapeutic agent used in a variety of solid tumors. Some paclitaxel-treated patients experience the intended therapeutic response with manageable side effects, while others have minimal response and/or severe toxicity. This variability in treatment outcome is partially determined by variability in drug exposure (pharmacokinetics) and by patient and tumor sensitivity (pharmacodynamics). Both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are dictated in part by common variants in the germline genome, known as SNPs. This article reviews the published literature on paclitaxel pharmacogenetics in cancer, focusing primarily on polymorphisms in genes relevant to paclitaxel pharmacokinetics and discusses preliminary work on pharmacodynamic genes and genome-wide association studies.

KEYWORDS::

• ABCB1
• CYP2C8
• CYP3A4/5
• FGD4
• GWAS
• paclitaxel
• personalized medicine
• pharmacogenetics
• single nucleotide polymorphism
• SNP
• TUBB

Financial & competing interests disclosure

D Hertz is an American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) fellow. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

D Hertz is an American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) fellow. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.