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PARP INHIBITORS

IWILLBEATTHIS
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Hi Ladies,

I was on a very much needed vacation last week and my sister called me to ask if I heard about this great Cancer Breakthrough. Of course on vacation I wasn't sitting watching T.V. but she said it was all over the news and internet. Something about Parp Inhibitors good for Breast Cancer (Triple Negative), Ovarian Cancer and one other. I couldn't find much on the internet, so I thought my friends on this site would have all the scoop. Anyone hear about this and what can you tell me.

Hugs and prayers to everyone!!!!!!

Explore topics in this discussion:

Targeted therapy Cancer Chemotherapy Carboplatin Biological therapy Breast cancer Ovarian cancer

8 replies

ReneP

this is copied from the young survivors coaltion mets board:

“Progress against cancer does not move at a constant velocity; sometimes there are watershed moments when the pace accelerates…..”

Yesterday, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology was one of those moments; another milestone in the treatment of breast cancer.

We saw one of those major milestones in this decade when Herceptin was introduced for the treatment of HER2+ metastatic breast cancer. A whole new modality of treatment, targeted biological therapy, then became established as an important component of adjuvant treatment in earlier stage breast cancer.

Now, "the biggest story in breast cancer right now is the PARP inhibitors," Clifford Hudis, chief of breast cancer medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center was quoted during a recent interview. "Any time you open up a new target, that's an exciting moment. These drugs may potentially be active not just to treat metastatic disease but to prevent recurrence."

And excitement there was, as news of PARP inhibitors was presented at the annual meeting attended by more than 30,000 oncologists. Even more exciting was that PARP inhibitors are being shown to be effective in triple negative tumors which often affects younger women at a higher rate and is responsible for about 15 percent of all breast cancer.

Since triple negative breast cancer lacks the three genetic targets needed for hormonal and Her2 therapies, the only effective treatment had been chemotherapy. It’s about time we have an effective targeted therapy for this form of the disease which occurs in about 15 percent of all breast cancers and affects younger women more than other forms.

“If the cancer is detected early enough, treatment with a PARP inhibitor may be able to permanently destroy the tumors…” , Barry Sherman, chief medical officer of Bi-Par Sciences, Inc. said in an interview at the conference yesterday. “There is an opportunity here to actually use the term 'cure' when it's applied to early-stage disease. That is perhaps one of the most exciting notions to come out of this. This is the forefront of a field that is about to open up, about DNA repair."

Bi-Par Sciences, recently purchased by Sanofi-Aventis, presented Phase II trial results that showed that their experimental cancer drug helped patients with advanced breast tumors live more than 60 percent longer using this new method that stops diseased cells from healing themselves.

The treatment, called BSI-201, shrank tumors and slowed new growth in a study of 116 patients with triple- negative breast cancer.

BSI-201 leads this exciting and emerging class of treatments known as PARP inhibitors. Most cancer treatments work by blasting DNA with chemotherapy or radiation. Cancer can fight back by using PARP enzymes to fix damaged strands of DNA. The new medicines are designed to block the enzymes and kill the cancer.

There are six different repair mechanisms in healthy human cells to repair DNA. When cancer develops, many of those mechanisms break down and leave the cell dependent on PARP to fix genetic damage from cancer treatments. Researchers have found that several forms of cancer in the ovaries, uterus, lungs and pancreas all have unusually high PARP enzyme activity, making them good targets for new therapies in other cancers as well, opening up a new era of cancer treatment.

In Sanofi's study, half of patients were given BSI-201 and a combination of chemotherapies, carboplatin and Eli Lilly & Co.'s Gemzar, and half were given chemo and a placebo. About 60 percent of patients who took BSI-201 saw their tumors shrink and cancer slow, almost three times as many as those who took only chemotherapy.

The median lifespan after treatment with BSI-201 was 9.2 months, compared with 5.7 months in the control group. Sometimes a few months might seem like baby steps, but these numbers are significant even in relation to our earlier blockbuster treatment, Herceptin. In highly pre-treated metastatic women, these additional months are noteworthy, and we are hopeful to see even more significant numbers in earlier stage women.

There were no significant side effects from the BSI-201 treatment, which was added to standard chemotherapy in this research trial. A separate study was presented at the conference showing that a similar PARP inhibitor, called olaparib and made by AstraZeneca Plc, shrank tumors even when administered without chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Sanofi will begin enrollment for an expanded trial of 400 patients in the next two months to confirm the results and the company estimates this could take as little as a year to complete before submitting to FDA regulators for market approval.

PARP inhibitors are the biggest story in breast cancer right now and another milestone on our war against the disease!

sarahbf

ReneP,
Thank you so much for sharing this article. I have been flooded with family members urging me to find out about the PARP trials - since this information coincides with the news that my current treatment (Herceptin, Faslodex and Zometa) is not being effective in the treatment of my bone mets. This is the first article that had been in language that I have been able to understand. Now to find out if it possible to participate in a trial....

ReneP

keep me posted
i think parp inhibitors will definitely be in my future as a triple neg gal.
Rene

mlm

This is very exciting news, being triple negative myself. I have an appt with my onc. today and I will report any new information back to everyone here under Rene's post. THANK YOU RENE!!!!!!
MaryLynn

mlm

Sorry I meant thank you iwillbeatthis and Rene!!!!

BethA

My doctor just mentioned this one to me yesterday. UC Davis is putting in a new trial this summer that I believe may be a Phase III....it's not on the internet yet. This one is getting a lot of buzz for being a good one for triple negative gals!

ReneP

Beth
please post something as soon as you know
something on the west coast would be MARVELOUS....

w1pamela

Hi,
Does anyone know if this will be good for one neg. I am HER2 neg the rest positive and as far as I can tell the Arimidex is working beautifully but a growth protein is a growth protein. The Arimdex can kill the cells but if the HER2 neg is just making them regrow -------.

Does anyone know if it can be used on just the one neg or will it affect the positive. I am about to surf the net to see, if I find anything I will let you know. Heck I found the CTX test for Zometa and ONJ on the net.
PamW

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