At the great Sisters, Oregon quilting frenzy
As no doubt you deduced many months ago, the oft-used
acronym BRCA stands for Breast Cancer; medical researcher types seem to like to
like to paste together the first two letters of words to designate
something. That, for example, the famous
HELA strain of cancer cells received its name from an equally famous patient named Henrietta
Lax.
Anyway, you really don’t want mutated BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes,
because they accompany (cause?) a high susceptibility to breast – and, as it
turns out – ovarian cancer. But, if you
DO have OVCA (see: ovarian cancer, OVCA) you should then hope that you are BRCA-positive,
because (for reasons I don’t understand) BRCA-positive cases are easier to
treat. The article cited below relates
how rucaparib, a PARP inhibitor developed by Clovis Pharmaceuticals has been so
successful in treating women with advanced BRCA-positive OVCA that it has been
granted fast-track status by the NCI and FDA.
If you know someone in that unfortunate category, tell them to hound
their oncodoc to get them in a trial.
Yes, I thought I had read this “news” before – and written
about it. 17 months ago! Boy, Clovis must have a skillful publicity
guy!
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