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Medicine Gets Personal
With new regulations and new diagnostics, pharmacogenetics comes to the clinic
Email: Jeffrey M Perkel - jperkel@the-scientist.com The Scientist 2005, 19(8):34
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Given accelerated approval in 1996, the chemotherapy drug irinotecan (Camptosar) can attack metastatic colorectal cancers that don't respond to other drugs. However, by 2004 a series of studies had suggested that the drug was particularly toxic in a subset of patients homozygous for a polymorphism of UGT1A1, a gene that codes for the bilirubin detoxifying enzyme, UDP-glucuronosyltransferase. About 10% of patients are homozygous for the genetic variant, which boosts their chances of developing a dangerously low level of white blood cells, a known side effect of the drug.
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