New research suggests men with prostate cancer could benefit from the drug olaparib, which is the first cancer drug to target inherited traits.
The drug was first licensed in December for women with ovarian cancer and inherited BRCA mutations, but new research shows it could also be beneficial to men with genomic faults within prostate tumors, the Institute of Cancer Research reported.
Of the 30 percent of men with advanced prostate cancer looked at in the study has tumors containing defects in repairing DNA, and these patients proved to respond particularly well to olaparib. The men who were most likely to have a positive response had mutations in BRCA genes and the gene ATM.
In the trial, researchers monitored the response of 49 men with treatment-resistant, advanced prostate cancer to the new drug, and found 16 had a positive response. Out of these 16 patients with detectable DNA repair mutations, 14 were part of the population that responded to the treatment.
"Our trial shows that olaparib is effective in men with defects in DNA repair genes who do not necessarily have an inherited risk of cancer - and that we can pick up these defects in the clinic. This opens up the exciting possibility of delivering precise treatment for advanced prostate cancer, guided by genomic testing and based on the particular molecular characteristics of patients' [tumors]," said trial chief investigator Professor Johann de Bono, Head of Drug Development at The Institute of Cancer Research.
The finding also shows PARP inhibitors can be used in a wider group of cancer patients than was previously believed, such as in both genders and those with larger ranges of gene defects than exclusively BRCA mutations.
"In recent years we've seen a significant improvement in the length of good-quality life men can hope to live even with the most advanced prostate cancers - thanks to clinical trials giving us several new prostate cancer drugs. These encouraging results show that olaparib could be the next drug to add to those already available. We are really excited to now be moving forward with the next phase of our trial, which will be a key step in the evaluation of olaparib in advanced prostate cancer," said Emma Hall, deputy director of the Cancer Research UK-funded Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research.
The findings were presented in the recent American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) conference.
