Editorial: Improving cancer chemotherapy through pharmacogenomics: a research topic

Citation: Quiñones LA and Lee KS (2015) Editorial: Improving cancer chemotherapy through pharmacogenomics: a research topic. It is well known that the efficacy and safety of chemotherapeutic drugs show substantial individual and/or population variability that can be explained, to a great extent, by genetic factors in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (Quiñones et al. In the context of anticancer drugs, polymorphisms in genes encoding drug-metabolizing enzymes, drug transporters and drug targets influence the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, have been shown to affect clinical outcomes (Binkhorst et al., 2015; Newman et al., 2015). Several chemotherapeutic agents can be more harmful to normal tissues than the targeted tumor, and their use may result in tumor cell resistance, toxicity and occasionally secondary neoplasia. Current practices for the dosing of therapeutic agents could be improved through the understanding of gene variation that impacts the life of the drug inside the body. In order to better predict a patient's predisposition to treatment complications and poor outcomes, it is essential to consider all candidate loci influencing response to the chemotherapeutic agents. This requires better understanding of the metabolic pathways for activation or inactivation of these drugs, drug interactions, age and gender sensitivities, and the impact of ethnicity and environmental factors. As an added benefit, a more rational use of expensive treatment drugs, together with actions to minimize patient toxic events and their consequences, would dramatically reduce medical costs. Pharmacogenomics is an emerging field focused on genetic variations relevant to drug Solid data concerning allele variants, haplotypes and their effects on gene expression, applied to the use of chemotherapy regimens' design and dosing has the potential to enhance treatment outcomes. Some of the potential polymorphic candidate genes include the With this Research Topic we aim to present an updated overview of the current trends in the experimental genetic approaches worldwide, and discuss future directions in cancer pharmacotherapy. The scope of this issue is to collect evidence to conceive chemotherapy tailored to each patient. In this special edition we have five manuscripts: four reviews and one original article. Filipski et al. (2014) discuss the use of observational studies, as well as the use adaptive trials and next generation sequencing to achieve the required level of evidence for clinical implementation. They propose to move the research field toward retrospective analyses, large population studies using Electronic Medical Records, and mechanism-based evidence to propel progress in the field. In addition, embracing new methods, such …