A new drug from Tesaro delays the recurrence of ovarian cancer and increases progression-free survival rates patients diagnosed with the disease, reports a recent study.
When administered to patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, Tesaro's niraparib, a PARP inhibitor, was found to prolong their progression-free survival. PARP inhibitors work by blocking the enzymes that repair cell DNA. Without the means to repair themselves, the damaged cancer cells eventually die.
It was noted in the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that a number of women benefited from the niraparib-assisted maintenance therapy. Tesaro, which announced early in June that the trial results are very encouraging, revealed the findings at the annual European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Copenhagen.
For the phase 3 ENGOT-OV16/NOVA clinical trial, the U.S. biopharmaceutical company included 553 patients suffering from ovarian cancer, who had recurrence following initial platinum chemotherapy and were treated successfully with second-line platinum chemotherapy. The patients were then involved in maintenance therapy with either niraparib or placebo to test the efficacy of the drug.
The trial was aimed at studying progression-free survival or the time taken for the recurrence of cancer in patients under niraparib in comparison with those who were given placebo. It was found that the risk of progression in ovarian cancer patients under niraparib treatment was reduced by 73 percent in women born with BRCA mutation. The progression-free survival in patients treated with the drug was observed to be 21 months while the span was 5.5 months for patients in placebo.
Meanwhile, the risk of recurrence in non-germline BRCA mutations in ovarian cancer patients under the drug was found to have reduced by 55 percent when compared to placebo. The average progression-free survival in patients under the PARP inhibitor was also found to be 9.3 months and 3.9 months for patients in the control group.
"Our conclusion is that all patients have a benefit and all patients must be treated," said lead author Dr. Mansoor Raza Mirza from Copenhagen University. "This is a breakthrough for patients with ovarian cancer. We have never seen such large benefits in progression-free survival in recurrent ovarian cancer."
Mirza also noted that about 70 percent of the patients suffering from ovarian cancer could benefit from niraparib, unlike the 15 to 20 percent benefit achieved with AstraZeneca's Lynparza (olaparib), a class of drug approved for use in ovarian cancer patients in 2014.
