Olaparib

Olaparib, marketed by AstraZeneca under the brand name Lynparza , was approved in the USA in December 2014 as a targeted, single-agent therapy for the treatment of germline BRCA-mediated advanced ovarian cancer.Olaparib, originally developed by KuDOS pharmaceuticals and later by AstraZeneca, functions as a poly ADP ribose polymerase inhibitor and has been specifically approved for patients who have received three or more treatments of chemotherapy. In clinical trials, the drug prolonged progression- free survival for patients suffering from platinum-sensitive recurrent serous ovarian cancer. Olaparib is also currently in various phases of investigation for treatment of breast, gastric, prostate, pancreatic and non-small cell lung cancer.

Olaparib is a kind of novel poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors, including PARP1, PARP2, and PARP3. PARP mediates a DNA-repair mechanism which plays a important role in DNA damage repair and apoptosis, so olaparib specifically targets on the DNA repair mechanism of the targeting cell DNA repair and take effects by attacking the critical vulnerabilities of cancer cells carrying mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. Owing to this mechanism, it can be used for the maintenance therapy of patients of severe recurrent ovarian cancer who has breast cancer susceptibility gene (BRCA) mutation as well as being sensitive to platinum drug.