DPYD goes live on PharmVar

PharmVar has announced the introduction of DPYD to its database. DYPD is the rate limiting enzyme involved in the catabolism of fluoropyrimidines (5-fluorouracil and capecitabine) which are used in several cancer treatment regimens. Clinical laboratories provide preemptive DPYD genotyping to avoid potentially life-threatening toxicity in patients carrying DPYD risk alleles. Annotations of clinical guidelines for DPYD are available on PharmGKB here.Prior to its introduction to PharmVar, there was no centralized resource for DPYD nomenclature. Some of the allelic variants were assigned star allele numbers when first published (DPYD*1-*13) or were referred to by a trivial name.Although star nomenclature based on haplotypes was initially used to name DPYD variants, this system was deemed impractical for DPYD due to the size of the gene and recombination between exons. To accommodate DPYD (and other genes with similar challenges in the future), PharmVar has developed a gene page format using rsIDs as PharmVar names instead of star allele designations.Check out the new DPYD page at https://www.pharmvar.org/gene/DPYD. PharmVar welcomes any feedback and encourages DPYD submissions to grow its inventory.