VIDEO: Recent advancements in ovarian cancer treatment

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

So, the most recent advance in ovarian cancer treatment is really the development of PARP inhibitors. And the development of PARP inhibitors really came on the heels of understanding the role of the BRCA genes in the genesis of these cancers, these tumors. BRCA1 and 2, which were cloned in the mid '90s, were shown to be involved in DNA repair and maintaining the integrity of her genome. So when a woman has a mutation in BRCA1 or 2, she's not able to efficiently repair DNA damage in her cells, and that can lead to cancer development. And PARP inhibitors were really developed to take advantage of that vulnerability in those cancer cells because once you mutate BRCA1 and 2, you only have a few pathways left that can repair DNA and enable the cancer cell to survive. By inhibiting PARP, we really take out two legs out of the three tripod chair, if you will, and that the cancer cell can't survive and it dies. So, PARP inhibitors were originally developed for that purpose. We now know that they have a slightly broader indication. So even women who don't necessarily have mutations in BRCA1 or 2, but their tumors look like they do, may be susceptible and responsive to these PARP inhibitors, and there's a number of them have already been approved by the FDA for use in ovarian cancer.