AN EARLY CAMPING TRIP
Wasn't she beautiful
Faithful
readers of this blog (and there are at least six of you – not counting my 176 avid Italians, of course) will know that immunotherapy is the current big thing in the war
against cancer, but that it hasn’t moved the ball much where ovarian cancer,
and many other solid tumors are concerned.
Those same faithful followers will know about PARP inhibitors (PARPi) and how they work to stifle cancer by “inhibiting”
nature’s way to repair things known as double-stranded DNA breaks. Since these broken double-stranded things
occur as mistakes made during cellular reproduction, and as cancer does a lot
of reproducing, inhibiting PARP is a good way to slow down tumor growth.
Well, the
article cited below reports on encouraging clinical trials that show that PARPi drugs used as “maintenance therapy” extend remission times in OVCA by quite
significant amounts – several years in some cases. It also appears that PARPi drugs may be useful as front-line therapy, as well. Neither way is it a
cure (yet), but PARPi drugs certainly can be useful. Here
are some of the drugs discussed: niraparib
(Zejula), olaparib (Lynparza), and valiparib.
There were three massive clinical trials involved in this research. More wrinkles are being investigated; stay
tuned
The moral of
the story is that, if you brush up against OVCA, remember that there are things
to do, and maybe trials to join. Make
sure your medical support is up to snuff.
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