title: Therapeutic drug monitoring in cancer chemotherapy.
abstract: For a select number of drugs, proper management of patients includes monitoring serum or plasma concentrations of the drugs and adjusting the doses accordingly - this practice is referred to as therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). The need for TDM arises when pharmacokinetic variability of drugs is not easily accounted for by common clinical parameters. Many chemotherapeutic drugs have large interindividual variability, yet TDM is not commonplace in chemotherapy management. This review will discuss pharmacokinetics in the context of chemotherapeutic drugs, examine the few instances where TDM is currently used in the field of oncology and propose other drugs where TDM might be useful for dose adjustments in the management of chemotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Univeristy of California, Irvine, Department of Pathology, Irvine, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Dylan M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bach
authors.forename: Joely A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Straseski
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Clarke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000493:pharmacokinetics / Q000627:therapeutic use; D054796:Drug Dosage Calculations; D016903:Drug Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents