Administering the drug niraparib after chemotherapy reduces the risk of relapse or death from ovarian cancer by almost 40%. This is indicated by an international study led by a Spanish expert who is presented today at the congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology that is being held these days in Barcelona.

Niraparib is a potent drug already marketed that is responsible for inhibiting an enzyme (PARP) involved in DNA repair and cell death. In clinical practice "it is being used as maintenance therapy in women who have suffered relapse in this type of tumor," explains Antonio González Martín, first author of this research and co-director of the Oncology department of the University of Navarra Clinic. But now, what has been seen is that it gives very good results before it occurs.

According to the researcher, the trial was conducted on 733 patients from 181 international centers, coordinated by the Spanish Ovarian Cancer Research Group (GEICO). All of them had just been diagnosed with advanced histological type ovarian cancer seros or high-grade endometrium . After receiving conventional first-line chemotherapy, "we added niraparib and observed a significant improvement in patient survival and a reduction of almost 40% of their risk of relapse."

Based on the results of this phase III trial, González Martín suggests "consider niraparib [financed by Tesaro, belonging to GlaxoSmitheKline] as a first treatment option for patients with advanced ovarian cancer after successful completion of first-line chemotherapy ". This group of patients, he adds, would be about 50% of women with advanced cancer. "They are the ones with the worst prognosis. Either they cannot be operated at the entrance and they require chemotherapy or they are in stage IV."

Given the absence of early diagnostic techniques, diagnosis cannot always occur in the early stages. In fact, it is the gynecological tumor that causes more deaths. Each year around 205,000 women are diagnosed worldwide, being the fifth leading cause of cancer death in women in Europe. It is usually diagnosed between 45 and 75 years, although there is a significant number of patients from 30 years.

Apart from a late diagnosis, up to 80% of those affected by advanced ovarian cancer relapse after surgery and chemotherapy . That is why the need to "look for new strategies and alternative therapies that increase the survival of patients with this disease," says the expert, who is also president of GEICO - which is part of the European Network of Cooperative Groups for Oncological Gynecological Tests ( ENGOT, for its acronym in English) -.

The research, which has just been published in the renowned medical journal 'The New England Journal of Medicine', also analyzed the effect of this treatment on women who had not mutated the BRCA gene (associated with the risk of suffering from this disease). Specifically, in those patients with a type of defect in DNA repair called homologous recombination deficiency (HRD). In these, the benefit of treatment was even greater, achieving a 57% reduction in the risk of relapse or disease progression.

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