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But the drug's highly targeted nature also means that it's only effective in patients whose cancer results from a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. For now, the trial's success serves as a proof of concept that synthetic lethality offers a promising strategy for anticancer drug development. By leveraging an understanding of the molecular basis for different kinds of cancers, researchers can begin to design a panoply of personalized therapies. And the researchers believe that olaparib's benefits may extend to other cancers characterized by defects in DNA repair.
The BRCA genes are classic examples of tumor suppressors--genes that, when absent or dysfunctional, set the stage for tumors to proliferate. Traditionally, researchers have struggled to find treatments that target tumor suppressors because it's difficult to restore a cellular function that's gone missing. "That has been a great problem in cancer-drug development," says Iglehart.
Synthetic lethality offers an alternate therapeutic route to those genes. "This trial is the first time that hypothesis was tested in people," says Iglehart. "That's why it's so interesting--nobody had ever developed a drug based against a tumor-suppressor gene using this concept of synthetic lethality. And they tested it in humans, and lo and behold, it worked just exactly the way you would expect it to work."
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This work looks promising. However, I believe antineoplaston work, such as that done by Burzynski and others, may be more personalized and more adaptable to all the various forms of cancer.
I cried as I read about this new medication. I was diagnosed in dec. 2004 of OVCA stage 3. Which spread to my liver in 2005. I started chemo again but had an anaphylactic reaction. A year later I had Ablation which worked. Then it spread again this time to a Lymphnode. I had cyberknife threatments I went into remission after only 3 months. Oh, I'm also BRCA 1 pos. as well as 7 other female family members (Mom,Sister, Aunts, Cousins) All Breast or Ovarian or both. Right now I've been in remssion for 6 months. So as a 4 1/2 year survivor of Ovarian Cancer stage 4 I'm praying that I can remain in remission until this medication is available.
Is there a way to get this drug now. Get in any clinical trials?
There are many sites online to help you find clinical trials. You should visit the National Cancer Institute (NCI) website, or something like searchclinicaltrials.org. I know it can be overwhelming, but these websites typically have 800 numbers so you can find a person to help out.
God bless you and your family.
Targeted therapy is not new and has not proven particularly effective. It has worked in CML, that is until the cancer develops resistance which is almost inevitable. It would have been more informative to be given survival benefit results which is the gold standard for cancer trials. There are plenty of very pricey treatments that extend survival by only a few months. If this type of cancer is so crippled for DNA repair then it would seem to be more logical to couple anti-PARP therapy with a DNA damaging agent such a cisplatin. Cancer is not going to be defeated with single agent therapy any more than HIV is going to be held off with a single antiviral drug.
Disease-free survival would certainly be helpful to know, but with such a new drug that will unfortunately just take time. And there are studies underway that look at treating the tumor with a DNA-damaging drug in combination(i.e. cisplatin). However, it's equally important to understand how the drug works alone first. I think the point is that even by itself, this non-toxic drug had significant measurable benefits. Definitely reason for excitement and optimism!!! It would be interesting to follow up with that handful of non-responders and investigate the DNA repair pathways that are still functional while they were on Olaparib.
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67 Comments
Personalized?
The article terms this drug 'personalized' and even 'highly personalized.' This ought to denote that it is specific to each individual person. But there is nothing in the description that shows that this is the case. It seems to be a highly specific drug targeted to a subset of a type of cancer. That is 'specific' - not 'personalized' - unless cancers can be called a person.
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