Potential for Improving Cancer Treatment by Optimising Drug Scheduling

Cancers often develop because of faulty DNA repair systems. PARP inhibitors (PARPi) are a class of targeted anti-cancer drugs that exploit this weakness, by inhibiting a complementary DNA repair system, to selectively target the tumour. However, these medicines need to be taken every day, creating a burden on patients and reducing the options for combination with other anticancer therapies. Professor Nicola Curtin and her team at Newcastle University investigated how long different PARPi stay active in cancer cells after a single dose and how this influences their effectiveness when combined with another anti-cancer drug.