More than 20,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in the United States, most of whom have advanced disease. Although chemotherapy can put the disease into remission, it often recurs and the treatment’s effectiveness tends to wane over time. As a result, ovarian cancer is the fifth most-common cause of cancer death in women.
On Saturday, a team of researchers including Stanford oncologist Jonathan Berek, MD, presented the results of an international, multi-center phase-3 clinical trial of a new oral medication called niraparib in 553 women with advanced, recurrent ovarian cancer at the annual meeting of the European Society for Molecular Oncology in Copenhagen. Berek, the Laurie Kraus Lacob Professor and director of the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, supervised Stanford’s involvement in the trial.
The aim of the study was to see whether niraparib could prolong the length of remission, also known as “progression-free survival,” in the women when compared to treatment with a placebo. As Berek described the niraparib treatment for me in an phone call, “This is a daily oral treatment with relatively low toxicity. Importantly, women don’t have to go to the hospital for regular infusions and are unlikely to experience significant hair loss.”
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