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Drug-Wide Association Study (DWAS): Challenges and Opportunities

Youjin Wang1, Shahinaz M Gadalla2

  • 1Clinical Genetics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. youjin.wang@nih.gov.

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention : a Publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, Cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology
|April 3, 2021
PubMed

Insights

Drug-wide association studies (DWAS) can identify potential cancer risks from medications using electronic health records. However, challenges like false positives and confounding factors require further research and validation for reliable findings.

Area of Science:

  • Pharmacology
  • Oncology
  • Epidemiology

Background:

  • Traditional studies on medication and cancer risk focus on one drug at a time.
  • Agnostic drug-wide association studies (DWAS) offer a broader approach using electronic health records.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To discuss the challenges and potential solutions for cancer DWAS.
  • To highlight the future opportunities for improving DWAS methodology.

Main Methods:

  • Utilizing large-scale electronic health records for DWAS.
  • Reviewing published cancer DWAS studies and their methodologies.

Main Results:

  • Cancer DWAS can simultaneously evaluate numerous drugs for cancer associations.
  • Current DWAS approaches face challenges including false positivity and confounding.

Conclusions:

  • DWAS are valuable for hypothesis generation but require further validation.
  • Future DWAS development needs to integrate pharmacology, epidemiology, cancer biology, and genetics.

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