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Padh. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2018;4:52 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2018.51 Metastasis and Treatment

Perspective Open Access

Pharmacogenetics and cancer management

Harish Padh

Bioscience Department, Sardar Patel University, VallabhVidyanagar 388120, India.

Correspondence to: Dr. Harish Padh, Bioscience Department, Sardar Patel University, VallabhVidyanagar 388120, India.
E-mail: hpadh@yahoo.com
How to cite this article: Padh H. Pharmacogenetics and cancer management. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2018;4:52.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2018.51
Received: 11 Aug 2018 First Decision: 20 Aug 2018 Revised: 26 Aug 2018 Accepted: 10 Sep 2018 Published: 29 Sep 2018

Science Editor: Godefridus J. Peters Copy Editor: Cui Yu Production Editor: Zhong-Yu Guo

Abstract
The science of one’s genetic background and its impact on disease susceptibility and drug response has
come of age and firmly established its proper place in the clinic. Its impact is felt more in the treatment of
cancer than any other disease area several reasons: critical time, narrow therapeutic index and overlapping
toxicity window. We realize that the true potential of pharmacogenetics will be realized when we have been
able to integrate other variants like insertion-deletion, copy number variation, etc., in addition to single
nucleotide polymorphism for their collective influence on drug response and toxicity. Technology has
rapidly evolved and has become affordable to be used in the clinic once it gets standardized and validated
not only in one population but in several major world population -particularly those which are under-
represented in human variant database.

Keywords: Pharmacogenetics, drug response, DNA variants, insertion-deletion, copy number variation,
therapeutic efficacy, toxicity

At the announcement of the first draft of the Human Genome Project in 2000, US President Bill Clinton
proclaimed, “future generation will know cancer only as a zodiac sign” hoping that deciphering the
human genome will lead to the eradication of cancer. This announcement, although ambitious, paved the
way to look at the human genome and attribute the regions of genome contributing to the formation of
cancer cells and dictating the response to treatment. The human genome changed the rules of the game.
This is also reflected in US President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative launched in January 2015,
“Precision medicine gives clinicians tools to better understand the complex mechanisms underlying
a patient’s health, disease, or condition, and to better predict which treatments will be most effective”

© The Author(s) 2018. 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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