Prof Jonathan Ledermann talks to ecancer at the 2012 IGCS meeting in Vancouver about the importance of discovering new biomarkers and the effectiveness of PARP inhibitors.

As oral agents, PARP inhibitors are often very well tolerated in patients with a BRCA mutation and in women predetermined to have ovarian cancer. The PARP inhibitors block repairing to cell DNA which causes the cell to die with minimal side effects to the patient.

The identification of the BRCA mutation is a biomarker that identifies a group of women that will respond well to these drugs and tell researchers that there is an urgent need to uncover similar markers.

Filming supported by Amgen