PARP Inhibitors Are Improving the Outlook of Hard-to-Treat Cancers

With three recent FDA approvals, and a number of Phase 3 trials ongoing, the drugs are seeing a surge in interest.

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In 2005, researchers in the U.K. struck upon a new way to kill cancer cells. A London-based team led by Alan Ashworth, currently head of the University of California, San Francisco’s cancer center, was working with cells harboring BRCA mutations—genetic perturbations that predispose humans to breast and other cancers. BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins are part of the cell’s homologous recombination (HR) machinery, and help repair double-strand breaks in DNA. When they are dysfunctional, cells accumulate mutations.

Ashworth and his team wondered whether BRCA1 or BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) mutations, in addition to making a cell susceptible to cancer, also made that cell more vulnerable in the event of further damage to its DNA repair machinery. So the researchers tried targeting a different pathway in these cells—one that ...

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