An expansion on my previous post on PARP inhibitors:
A Curetoday.com blog gives a bit more explanation on the recent research (presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting) showing how PARP inhibitors can help advanced triple negative breast cancers:
What happens when a preliminary study that was not designed for drug approval ends up showing dramatic results?
A study in patients with advanced "triple negative" breast cancer (defined as being negative for estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors) compared chemotherapy (Gemzar and carboplatin) with or without BSI-201, a poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor.
PARP inhibitors have been shown to work exceptionally well in the laboratory against cancers that have defects in DNA repair – this is an abnormality that is prominent in cancers that derive from patients who have inherited mutations in the breast and ovarian cancer predisposing genes BRCA1 and 2. It turns out that BRCA1-associated tumors tend to be triple negative (although not all triple negative tumors have abnormalities of the BRCA pathways).
This was a preliminary phase II study, so even though it was randomized, it did not have enough patients to qualify as an FDA-approval trial. But it nevertheless showed unprecedented effects on inducing tumor responses, delaying time to progression, and improving survival – even greater than hormonal therapy and Herceptin have.
Read the entire article here.
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