PARP sounds cooler than BRCA

If you’ve been following the news at all, you know that a new class of drugs called “PARP inhibitors” are being talked about like crazy. Not only have they been shown to improve outcomes drastically for women with breast cancer (and men with prostate cancer), but they improve outcomes specifically for women with BRCA mutations or triple-negative breast cancer (the most lethal type)!  85% of women with the BRCA 1 mutation have triple-negative breast cancer (as if the mutation weren’t enough), so this is a double plus for these women!

Of course, these results are still preliminary and more clinical trials will need to be done, but this is pretty exciting stuff, people.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this may end up being a breakthrough in the same realm as the HER-2/Herceptin amazingness.  I can’t be sure…but it seems promising.

Here’s how PARP inhibitors work (in really simple, non-medical, “people-who-don’t-know-that-much-about-science” speak):

All cells have systems for repairing broken DNA. PARP, BRCA1, and BRCA2 are all part of that system.  Basically, when DNA is broken, it calls up these guys and they come with their tool kits and hammer it back together.

Women with mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 have to rely much more heavily on PARP to fix the DNA in their cells, because BRCA1 or BRCA2 has a broken leg and can’t be of much help.

While all of this happens in normal cells, it also happens in cancer cells.  Normally, chemotherapy damages the DNA in cancer cells but then PARP comes in and fixes some of the damage, making chemotherapy less effective.  PARP inhibitors give the PARP repair truck a flat tire, preventing PARP from getting to the job to repair the DNA damage caused by chemotherapy.  So the cancer cells simply can’t figure out a way to repair themselves, and they die!  Woohoo! We like that.  Death to cancer cells.

So that’s pretty much it.  To read some real, actual medical information on PARP, here are some sweet links!

Peace out (to my readers, if there are any,  AND to cancer).

FORCE: PARP inhibitor research presented at 2009 ASCO Conference.

Reuters: New breast cancer drugs block cell repair enzyme

Science of PARP

ASCO: New Drug Class Promising in Breast Cancer