PARP inhibitors
Posted 7/22/2010
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There is a lot of excitement and conversation about a new class of anti-cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors. They are being tested in the treatment of a number of cancers, not just breast, and the early indications is that they are especially helpful in the treatment of inherited breast cancers (meaning cancers in women who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene). Here is a brief quote from an article from Living Beyond Breast Cancer and then links to read the whole article as well as a link to a brief interview with Dr. Eric Weiner about these drugs:
Anew family of medicines called
PARP inhibitors dominated headlines
from the June annual meeting
of the American Society of Clinical
Oncology. The medications, which target
the way cancer cells repair themselves,
could revolutionize treatment for breast
and other cancers, doctors say.
Early studies, while small, suggest PARP
inhibitors work powerfully against some
types of metastatic triple-negative and
hereditary breast cancers. The findings
were so impressive that the New England
Journal of Medicine took the unusual
step of calling for FDA approval of a PARP
inhibitor based on results of a Phase I
clinical trial, only the first of three steps
normally needed for approval.
http://www.lbbc.org/content/newsletter/insight-fall-2009.asp
(scroll down; the PARP inhibitors story is the second one)
http://ww5.komen.org/contentsimpleleft.aspx?id=16413
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