Olaparib Targets Some Advanced Prostate Cancers.

In the phase II TOPARP-A clinical trial, patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer who were treated with the PARP inhibitor olaparib lived nearly three times longer without their cancer worsening if their tumors had mutations in at least one of 12 DNA repair genes. However, physicians say that a larger trial is needed to confirm olaparib's effectiveness against the disease before they start routinely sequencing tumors and prescribing the drug.