The role of germline variants in chemotherapy outcome in brain tumors: a systematic review of pharmacogenetic studies

Abstract

AIM: This systematic review provides an overview of publications concerning pharmacogenetic research in pediatric patients with medulloblastoma and low-grade glioma. MATERIALS & METHODS: Three electronic databases searches including a manual search were performed to identify studies investigating potential interactions between germline variants and chemotherapy efficacy and toxicity. RESULTS: Out of 3570 citations, 21 studies were included. Outcomes include overall survival, progression-free survival and treatment-related adverse events (n = 5), cisplatin-induced ototoxicity (n = 13) and vincristine-induced neurotoxicity (n = 3). CONCLUSION: This review shows that the number of pharmacogenetic studies in well-defined pediatric brain tumor cohorts is poor and studies often report conflicting results. Large-scale international collaborations allowing analysis of sufficiently sized cohorts are therefore very important for the future of personalized medicine in brain tumors.