Molecular Markers of Chemotherapy Toxicity in Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

Personalized medicine appears to be the inevitable consequence of improvements in our understanding of the mechanisms of action of chemotherapeutic agents, as well as the description of the human genome and its impact on our understanding of the genes involved in DNA repair and drug metabolism. These rapid developments have been associated with the first efforts to establish genetic predictors of chemotherapy efficacy and toxicity for the chemotherapy drugs active in colorectal cancer—fluorouracil, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin.