Dr. Hussain Discusses PARP Inhibitors in Prostate Cancer

Maha Hussain, MD, FACP, FASCO, Genevieve Teuton Professor of Medicine, Deputy Director, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, discusses PARP inhibitors in the treatment of patients with prostate cancer.

The interest in PARP inhibitors began with early observation that the use of targeting DNA repair may be of benefit in the treatment of patients with prostate cancer. From there, a clinical trial that hypothesized that co-targeted androgen receptor (AR) and DNA repair with the use of a PARP inhibitor is a relevant strategy, and the combination will have a better outcome than targeting AR alone. This combination may be of particular benefit for a certain subset of patients with prostate cancer who have S-gene fusions, Hussian says.

In a recent clinical trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer underwent a metastatic disease biopsy for an evaluation of their ETS tumor status. They were then stratified by ETS status and randomized to abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) plus prednisone, or abiraterone plus prednisone and the PARP inhibitor veliparib.