An Overview Regarding Pharmacogenomics and Biomarkers Discovery: Focus on Breast Cancer

Curr Top Med Chem. 2022;22(20):1654-1673. doi: 10.2174/1568026622666220801115040.

Abstract

Breast cancer represents a health concern worldwide for being the leading cause of cancer- related women's death. The main challenge for breast cancer treatment involves its heterogeneous nature with distinct clinical outcomes. It is clinically categorized into five subtypes: luminal A; luminal B, HER2-positive, luminal-HER, and triple-negative. Despite the significant advances in the past decades, critical issues involving the development of efficient target-specific therapies and overcoming treatment resistance still need to be better addressed. OMICs-based strategies have marked a revolution in cancer biology comprehension in the past two decades. It is a consensus that Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is the primary source of this revolution and the development of relevant consortia translating pharmacogenomics into clinical practice. Still, new approaches, such as CRISPR editing and epigenomic sequencing are essential for target and biomarker discoveries. Here, we discuss genomics and epigenomics techniques, how they have been applied in clinical management and to improve therapeutic strategies in breast cancer, as well as the pharmacogenomics translation into the current and upcoming clinical routine.

Keywords: Breast cancer; Drug development; Drug discovery; Epigenomics; Omics; Pharmacogenomics.

MeSH terms

  • Biomarkers, Tumor / genetics
  • Breast Neoplasms* / drug therapy
  • Breast Neoplasms* / genetics
  • Female
  • Genomics
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Humans
  • Pharmacogenetics
  • Receptor, ErbB-2

Substances

  • Biomarkers, Tumor
  • Receptor, ErbB-2