부산대학교 도서관

The use of genetic information to guide pharmacotherapy decisions, referred to as pharmacogenetics, is particularly important in cancer, which is a disease of the genome. The genetic aberrations that most often cause cancer have been cataloged, initiating research programs to develop drugs to counteract these oncogenic mechanisms. Treatment decisions are now made based on knowledge of the genetic driver within an individual tumor. Aside from the tumor (somatic) genome, treatment decisions can be influenced by the patient (germline) genome. The germline genome dictates patient sensitivity to drug‐induced toxicity and determines the patient's exposure to treatment. Clinicians can use both the somatic and germline genome to select the appropriate dose of the correct drug to maximize the benefit and minimize the toxicity of cancer therapy for an individual patient.