Pharmacogenetics & cancer malignancy
Cancer is one of the first areas struggling with pharmacogenetics.
Cancer is a ancestral disease. Because of inherited or even new mutations, cells lose to be able to control growth and replication, and multiply unmanageable.
Mutations in many different genes could potentially cause cancer, and a particular style of cancer - breast cancer, for instance - may be caused by mutations in a number of genes. But drugs can be directed at specific genetic flaws within cancer malignancy cells.
A classic example of this is the a drug used to treat breast cancer, called Herceptin (also often known as trastuzumab). This drug is directed at a protein known as HER2. Around 20-30% of cancers have high degrees of HER2 on their surface in their cells. A test can identify women that have cancers likely to respond for the drug. (Strictly speaking, this is just not a pharmacogenetic test as that assesses HER2 protein levels as opposed to looking the DNA sequence of the HER2 gene, but the principle would be the same. )
Another good case in point of targeted cancer treatment can be Glivec (imatinib). This therapy is specifically-used to treat a type of leukaemia caused by a quality chromosomal rearrangement. This rearrangement creates a mutant growth-promoting protein in white blood cells that triggers them to become cancerous. The actual drug recognises this mutant protein, so will only work on leukaemias where it is present.
These cases illustrate how medicines are increasingly being developed by known disease mechanisms. This is known as rational drug design. It is an important manner in which pharmacogenetic research is impacting with drug development. Identifying genes and proteins involved in disease processes reveals targets pertaining to drug development.
Traditionally, cancer therapy has targeted dividing cells by the body processes - but cancer cells will not be the only dividing cells by the body processes, so cancer treatments tend to own many side-effects. Rational therapies are definitely more specific, but each is apt to be suitable for only a handful of tumour types.
Cancer is a condition which is being studied extensively using pharmacogenomics. This is because the disease has a strong genetic component and never many therapies are available. An untreatable cancer is normally fatal - so new therapies are urgently needed.
0 comments :
Post a Comment