Purpose: The combination of a platinum and taxane are standard of care for many cancers, but the utility is often limited due to debilitating neurotoxicity. We examined whether single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) from annotated candidate genes will identify genetic risk for chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity.

Patients and methods: A candidate-gene association study was conducted to validate the relevance of 1,261 SNPs within 60 candidate genes in 404 ovarian cancer patients receiving platinum/taxane chemotherapy on the SCOTROC1 trial. Statistically significant variants were then assessed for replication in a separate 404 patient replication cohort from SCOTROC1.

Results: Significant associations with chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity were identified and replicated for four SNPs in SOX10, BCL2, OPRM1, and TRPV1. The population attributable risk for each of the four SNPs ranged from 5% to 35%, with a cumulative risk of 62%. According to the multiplicative model, the odds of developing neurotoxicity increase by a factor of 1.64 for every risk genotype. Patients possessing three risk variants have an estimated OR of 4.49 (2.36-8.54) compared to individuals with 0 risk variants. Neither the four SNPs nor the risk score were associated with progression-free survival or overall survival.

Conclusions: This study shows that SNPs in four genes have a significant cumulative association with increased risk for the development of chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicity, independent of patient survival.

©2013 AACR.