MEMPHIS, Tenn., Dec. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A troublesome side effect caused by some cancer drugs appear to be caused by a broken "pump" in the liver that fails to push these medicines into a "drain," according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The finding offers doctors a way to identify patients who are likely to develop diarrhea as a side effect from taking these drugs. The discovery also has implications for people taking other drugs, since this pump controls the blood levels of many prescription drugs. This study is the first to show that a specific mutation in the pump, called ABCG2, is associated with a drug-induced side effect, according to researchers.
Mutant ABCG2 can also be less efficient at pushing drugs out of the intestine, which can also cause diarrhea, according to Sharyn Baker, Pharm.D., Ph.D., associate member of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude. She is senior author of a report on these findings in the Dec. 6 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Baker was at Johns Hopkins when she worked on this project.
Other authors of the paper include George Cusatis, Jing Li, Manuel Hidalgo, Roxann Ingersoll (Johns Hopkins); Vanesa Gregorc, Anna Spreafico and Eugenio Villa (Scientific Institute University Hospital San Raffaele, Milano, Italy); Jaap Verweij (Erasmus MC-Daniel den Hoed Cancer Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Vienna Ludovini (Policlinico Monteluce Hospital, Perugia, Italy); and Alex Sparreboom (National Cancer Institute, NIH).
This work was supported in part by the Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Founded by late entertainer Danny Thomas and based in Memphis, Tenn., St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world. No family ever pays for treatments not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay. St. Jude is financially supported by ALSAC, its fund-raising organization. For more information, please visit www.stjude.org .
St. Jude Children's Research HospitalCONTACT: Bonnie Kourvelas of St. Jude Public Relations, +1-901-495-4815,or bonnie.kourvelas@stjude.org
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