Genetics of certain cancer drugs

Many cancer drugs kill both healthy cells and cancer cells. They kill any cell that grows fast. Hair producing cells, skin cells, and cells that line your stomach all grow fast. This can cause side effects. The drugs can make you sick to your stomach. Your hair may fall out. You might feel tired, or weak, or both. We have new drugs for some cancers now. They kill more cancer cells and less healthy cells. But you may still have some side effects. Two main things determine what side effects you might get. One is how long you are on the drug. Some drugs stay in our bodies longer than others. Over time, this can cause the amount of the drug in our bodies to rise. When this happens, the side effects can get worse. They can be so bad we have to stop giving you the drug. This makes it harder to fight the cancer. The other is changes in our genes. These are changes we are born with. Some gene changes affect the proteins they make. Proteins process everything we eat. They also process any drugs that we take. If the proteins that process cancer drugs do not work well, this can also cause side effects. Again, this can limit how long you can be on the drug. It also affects how we can fight the cancer. Scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center will use BioVU to study one side effect of a class of cancer drugs. They will look for people taking the drugs. They will check who has and does not have the side effect. Then they will look for gene changes in the group who have that side effect. They want to figure out who might be at risk for the side effect. If we know who is at risk before we give the drug, we can give you a different drug to fight the cancer. The goal is give you the best drug to fight the cancer, with the least side effects.