Pharmacogenomics as the next therapeutic step in the treatment of pediatric asthma

Asthma is a common chronic disease in childhood, which affects about 10% of children worldwide. Actually has been suggested that the interindividual variation in drug response in asthmatic patients could be partly genetically determined. Moreover, there is evidence that individuals from different populations and ethnic groups respond differently to asthma medications, likely due to genetic variants inherited from a specific ancestry associated with disease severity or response to treatment.

Pharmacogenomics is a subfield of genomics, the genome-wide study, which evaluates the effect of genetic variants on the individual’s response to treatment  Starting from patients’ genetic information, pharmacogenomics aims to contribute to predicting responses to the given treatment. The poor replication and heterogenicity of the results obtained in the different independent studies and their limited number of cases studied, the identification of specific markes for the different ethnic groups and for the different phenotypes of asthma, a shared database and finally the elevated ones, are currently in the search for limits in the advancement of pharmacogenomics.

Research infrastructures provided new services for the community of scientists. In particular, the Biobanking and BioMolecular resources (BBMRI-ERIC) infrastructure, sustains the collection of biological samples, such as blood, tissues or DNA that may be useful to detect new targets for therapy and may support drug discovery and development.

Though many genetic variants have been shown to influence response to short- and long-acting β-2 agonists, inhaled corti- costeroids, and leukotriene modifiers, results are still inconsistent and/or effect sizes are small.

In summary, though pharmacogenomics studies have provided insight into the genetic mechanisms implicated in asthma treatment response, more research is needed to obtain predictive markers with clinical relevance.

Bibliography 

Giuliana Ferrante, Salvatore Fasola, Velia Malizia, Amelia Licari , Giovanna Cilluffo, Giorgio Piacentini  and Stefania La Grutta . Pharmacogenomics: A Step forward Precision Medicine in Childhood Asthma. Genes Mar 28;2022 13(4):599. doi: 10.3390/genes13040599.

curated by Paolo Del Greco and Antonino Capizzi