Webinar: PGx of Thiopurine Toxicities: Experience at St Jude Children's Research Hospital
WEBINAR RECORDED ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2020
Webinar Summary
Thiopurines are widely used as anti-cancer drugs and as immunosuppressive agents, but also have a narrow therapeutic index due to hematopoietic toxicities. Therefore, there is a compelling rationale for improvements in evidence-based precision medicine approaches to maximize thiopurine efficacy while reducing side effects. By pharmacogenomic profiling, we comprehensively identify genetic factors associated with thiopurine toxicity with the goal to use this information to develop genetics-guided treatment individualization. For example, inherited deficiency in detoxification enzymes TPMT and NUDT15 predisposes children with leukemia to severe thiopurine-induced myelosuppression, and we show that preemptive dose adjustment based on gene genotype effectively minimizes host toxicity without compromising anti-cancer efficacy of this class of drugs. At the forefront of precision medicine, pharmacogenomics holds particularly great promise to transform medical practice with more efficacious and safer therapies across diseases.
About Speaker
Jun Yang, PhD
Dr. Yang is the Member Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Oncology and the Hematological Malignancies Program of St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Yang’s group is part of the National Institutes of Health Pharmacogenomics Research Network and he serves as the Co-leader of the Center for Precision Medicine in Leukemia. He is the recipient of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics Young Investigator Award and the American Society of Hematology Scholar Award.
Webinar Recording: How PGx Reduces Thiopurines-related ADRs
Dr. Manzi at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dr. Scharer at RPRD discussed how to use PGx to reduce thiopurines-related ADRs in the clinical practice.
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