CYP3A7*1C Allele Associated With Poor Outcomes in CLL, Breast, and Lung Cancer

Patients with the CYP3A7*1C allele suffer higher rates of cancer progression and mortality, possibly because of worse outcomes among patients treated with chemotherapy drugs that are broken down by the enzyme encoded by CYP3A7, according to authors of a retrospective study published in the journal Cancer Research.

“We found that individuals with breast cancer, lung cancer, or CLL [chronic lymphocytic leukemia] who carry one or more copy of the CYP3A7*1C allele tend to have worse outcomes,” said Olivia Fletcher, PhD, a senior investigator at the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, England, in an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) news release.

Approximately 8% of cancer patients harbor the CYP3A7*1C allele, the coauthors noted. For these patients, it is possible that standard chemotherapy with CYP3A substrates “may not be optimal,” they cautioned.

The team analyzed DNA samples from 1,008 patients with breast cancer, 1,128 patients with lung cancer, and 347 patients with CLL. They found that the CYP3A7*1C-associated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs45446698 is associated with increased breast cancer mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.74; P = .03), all-cause mortality among patients with lung cancer (HR 1.43; P = .009), and progression of CLL (HR 1.62; P = .03). The rs45446698 SNP is one of seven SNPs that form the CYP3A7*1C allele.

The CYP3A7*1C allele is expressed in adults, whereas other variants of CYP3A7 are expressed during fetal development. CYP3A7 encodes an enzyme that degrades estrogen and testosterone, and some anticancer drugs.

“We also found borderline evidence of a statistical interaction between the CYP3A7*1C allele, treatment of patients with a cytotoxic agent that is a CYP3A substrate, and clinical outcome (P = .06),” they noted.

“Even though we did not see a statistically-significant difference when stratifying patients by treatment with a CYP3A7 substrate, the fact that we see the same effect in three very different cancer types suggests to me that it is more likely to be something to do with treatment than the disease itself,” commented Dr. Fletcher. “However, we are looking at ways of replicating these results in additional cohorts of patients and types of cancer, as well as overcoming the limitations of this study.”

Limitations included the retrospective nature of the study and the absence of data on how quickly individual patients metabolized chemotherapeutic agents, she said.