Dr. Burgess on Improving Biomarkers for PARP Inhibitors in Prostate Cancer

Earle Burgess, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Levine Cancer Institute, Atrium Health, discusses the need for improved biomarkers for PARP inhibitors in prostate cancer.

Although PARP inhibitors have revolutionized the treatment landscape for some patients with prostate cancer, improved biomarkers are needed to inform which patients are likely to respond to the therapy, Burgess says.

The presence of a single pathogenic mutation is likely not an optimal way of defining homologous recombination repair (HRR) deficiency in this patient population, says Burgess. However, HRR deficiency is needed to induce synthetic lethality from PARP inhibition, Burgess explains.

The addition of more functional biomarkers, such as genome-wide loss of heterozygosity, to future clinical trials could inform true HRR-deficient disease, concludes Burgess.