Dr Daniel Silver speaks to ecancer.tv about the use of PARP inhibitors in the treatment of breast cancer. The inhibition of the PARP pathway causes coding errors and breaks within DNA strands. In healthy cells these breaks are recombined by a process that relies on BRCA1 and BRCA2. PARP inhibitory therapy for patients who have BRCA mutations causes tumour cells to dies due to an accumulation of double stranded breaks. The key advantage of this therapy is that healthy cells that do not have the BRCA mutation can effectively repair these breaks and do not experience adverse effects. Phase II research has demonstrated efficacy of PARP inhibitors in the treatment of BRCA mutated breast cancer.

There is interest in the clinical application of PARP inhibitors for the treatment of sporadic triple negative breast cancer as it is thought these patients may have a degree of damage to the BRCA gene or pathway. Although it does not appear that these patients can be effectively treated with PARP inhibitory monotherapy, there is current research looking at the use of PARP inhibitors in combination with other agents.