Until now it was only thought that those who had ovarian cancer as a result carrying an inherited “faulty” copy of the BRCA gene – accounting for up to 15 per cent of cases – would benefit from a class of drug called PARP inhibitors.
But now scientists have developed a new test that shows 60 per cent of all patients with ovarian cancer could benefit from them.
Every year almost 7,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Survival rates are poor, principally because the disease is often picked up late.
Currently there are no PARP inhibitor drugs licensed to treat ovarian cancer patients. A handful such as olaparib have shown promising results at reducing tumours in early trials.
But this new test shows that even more patients – 60 per cent of all patients with ovarian cancer – may benefit from PARP inhibitors.
Ovarian cancer
Inherited ovarian cancer accounts for up to 15 per cent of all cases of the disease. Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in females in the UK. There are around 6,850 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed each year in the UK – around 130 women every week.
Dr Asima Mukhopadhyay*, presenting the results, said: “Our results show that this new test is almost 100 per cent effective in identifying which ovarian cancer patients could benefit from these promising new drugs.
“We have only been able to carry out this work because of the great team we have here which includes both doctors and scientists.”
The team based at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead and the Newcastle Cancer Centre at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University collaborated with Pfizer Inc to develop the new assay to test tumour samples taken from ovarian cancer patients when they had surgery.
The test, called the RAD51 assay, scans the cancer cells and identifies which tumour samples contain defective DNA repair that can be targeted by the PARP inhibitor. The PARP inhibitor studied, PF-01367338 – formerly known as AG-14699 – was found to selectively block the spread of tumour cells with low RAD51 expression.
The test has been used to examine tumour samples in the laboratory and is not yet suitable for routine clinical practice but the team hope to refine it for use in patients.
Dr Mukhopadhyay added: “Now we hope to hone the test to be used directly with patients and then carry out clinical trials. If the trials are successful we hope it will help doctors treat patients in a personalised and targeted way based on their individual tumour.”
It is also now hoped that PARP inhibitors will be useful for a broad range of cancers and we hope this test can be extended to other cancer types.
Dr Lesley Walker, Cancer Research UK’s director of cancer information, said: “It’s exciting to see the development of promising new ‘smart’ drugs such as PARP inhibitors. But equally important is the need to identify exactly which sub groups of patients will benefit from these new treatments.
“Tests like this will become invaluable in helping doctors get the most effective treatments quickly to patients, sparing them from unnecessary treatments and side effects.”
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Women in the UK are more likely to die of cancer than in the rest of Europe, figures revealed today.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the death rate among British women from all kinds of cancer was higher than in countries including Italy, France and Portugal.
The figures, from 2007, recorded 153.7 deaths per 100,000 women in the UK, compared with an average of 131.5 deaths in the rest of the EU that year.
Also higher than average were Holland, Ireland, Poland and Hungary, which had the highest death rate from cancer in Europe.
The fewest cancer deaths in 2007 were recorded in Spain and Cyprus, each with just over 100 per 100,000 women.
Breast cancer is the most common form of female cancer in the UK. It is also the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide, after lung cancer, according to ONS statistics released in 2009.
Between 2000 and 2007, death rates from breast cancer in women fell in both the UK and the EU, by 3.7 and 3.2 deaths per 100,000 respectively.
The 2007 death rate from breast cancer for women in the UK remained higher than in Europe, at an average of 26.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants compared with 23.6 elsewhere.
The data was released as part of an ONS study of British healthcare, showing that 89% of people rated the quality of the UK system good or very good, compared with 70% across the EU.
The report also looked at life expectancy, revealing that men born in the UK in 2007 could expect to live 1.6 years longer on average than their European counterparts.
British women could expect to live 0.3 years less than the EU average.