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

This systematic review provides an overview of publications concerning pharmacogenetic research in pediatric patients with medulloblastoma and low-grade glioma. Three electronic databases searches including a manual search were performed to identify studies investigating potential interactions between germline variants and chemotherapy efficacy and toxicity. 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). 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.