An international study whose latest data has been presented at the congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has confirmed that the drug niraparib indicated for the treatment of patients who have just been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer is effective in the long term , as it has shown that the improvement obtained is maintained three years after the start of treatment.
Niraparib (Zejula) was approved by the European Commission in December 2017, and is the only once-daily oral monotherapy maintenance treatment approved by the United States and the European Union for patients with early-onset platinum-responsive advanced ovarian cancer. line, regardless of biomarker status. Now Dr. Antonio González, principal investigator of the trial, president of the Spanish Ovarian Cancer Research Group (GEICO) and director of the Department of Medical Oncology at the University Clinic of Navarra, has presented the new data that support its efficacy.
Dr. González explains that “patients treated with niraparib as maintenance therapy after chemotherapy can achieve sustained cancer progression-free survival and maintain remission over time” and details that these good results are “vital importance in the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer, and particularly reassuring for those at high risk of relapse. The long-term data not only shows the continued benefit of niraparib for our trial participants, but also offers hope for the future of patients with advanced ovarian cancer.”
Niraparib fights ovarian cancer in the long term
The study called PRIMA/ENGOT-OV26 has been promoted by GSK and it has analyzed 733 patients recently diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer of a high-grade serous histological or endometrial type. This phase III clinical trial was carried out in 181 international centers, coordinated by the Spanish Ovarian Cancer Research Group (GEICO), which in turn is part of the European Network of Cooperative Groups for Gynecological Oncological Trials (ENGOT, for its acronym in English), associations of which Dr. González is also president.
“The long-term data not only shows the continued benefit of niraparib for our trial participants, but also offers hope for the future of patients with advanced ovarian cancer”
The trial has been based on adding the drug niraparib (Zejula) after conventional first-line chemotherapy treatment for these patients. Niraparib is a potent inhibitor of PARP –an enzyme involved in DNA repair and cell death– that is used as maintenance therapy in women with relapsed ovarian cancer, whether or not they have mutated BRCA gene, associated with the risk of developing this sickness.
The effect of this treatment was also tested in patients with a type of DNA repair defect called homologous recombination deficiency (HRD). In the patients who did present this deficiency –half of the study participants–, the benefit of the treatment was even greater, achieving a 57% reduction in the risk of relapse or progression of the disease.
After a median follow-up of three and a half years, the main results of the clinical trial were:
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