A pair of international phase 2 studies suggest a novel new drug can help shrink tumors in women with BRCA-mutated cancers, specifically advanced breast cancer and to a lesser degree recurrent ovarian cancer.
The experimental drug, olaparib, is the first single-agent non-chemotherapeutic drug to show efficacy in this patient population, and researchers see the results of these two trials as being more evidence to support the emerging notion that future successful cancer treatments will not be anatomy-based, but will target cancer at the molecular level.
CANCER TYPE(S)
BRCA1- and BRCA2-mutated advanced breast cancer and recurrent ovarian cancer
TREATMENT TYPE(S)
Targeted therapy: poly-ADP-ribose phosphorylase (PARP) inhibitors
HOW DOES IT WORK?
PARP inhibitors are supposed to inhibit the action of poly-ADP ribose-phosphorylase (PARP), an enzyme that repairs damaged DNA within a cell.
WHERE WAS THIS RESEARCH PUBLISHED?
The Lancet
By Ross Bonander
Source
CancerResearchUK
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