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Mini et al. Cancer Drug Resist 2020;3:225-31 Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/cdr.2020.10 Drug Resistance

Editorial Open Access

“Pharmacogenetics of Cancer” - Cancer Drug

Resistance special issue

Enrico Mini , Stefania Nobili 1,2
1,2
1 Department of Health Sciences, Section of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, University of Florence, Florence 50139,
Italy.
2 Cancer Pharmacology Working Group of the Italian Society of Pharmacology, Milan 20129, Italy.

Correspondence to: Dr. Enrico Mini, Department of Health Sciences, Section of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, University
of Florence, Florence 50139, Italy. E-mail: enrico.mini@unifi.it

How to cite this article: Mini E, Nobili S. “Pharmacogenetics of Cancer” - Cancer Drug Resistance special issue. Cancer Drug
Resist 2020;3:225-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/cdr.2020.10

Received: 5 Feb 2020 Accepted: 5 Feb 2020 Available online: 20 Feb 2020
Science Editor: Frits Peters Copy Editor: Jing-Wen Zhang Production Editor: Tian Zhang

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics have expanded rapidly over the past years and represent
one of the bases of precision medicine. The application of pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic
approaches and tools for the selection of medications and their dosage to improve patient care is nowadays
[1,2]
substantially increased . Prescription drug information sheets in several therapeutic areas (psychiatric,
cardiovascular, analgesic, antiviral, and anticancer drugs) provide current information on pharmacogenetic
and pharmacogenomic biomarkers for over 200 medicines including mandatory or recommended
[3]
biomarker testing prior to initiating therapy .
The pharmacological treatment of cancer is an ideal field for the application of pharmacogenetics and
pharmacogenomics in clinical practice. Substantial advances in pharmacological therapy of cancer over
the past three decades have been made through the discovery of cancer molecular hallmarks and the
development of specific anticancer therapeutics [e.g., chemical protein kinase inhibitors, anti-membrane
receptor monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs), and more recently transformative cell and gene therapeutics].
These drugs target tumor cells, immune cells, and other cells of the cancer microenvironment and may
be selected on the basis of the presence of specific molecular alterations including somatic or germline
[4]
mutations .
However, anticancer drug toxicity remains a major issue in cancer care. This is typically associated with the
use of classical cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents, often leading to considerable morbidity and mortality,

© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

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