PARP Inhibitors in First-Line Therapy of Ovarian Cancer: Are There Any Doubts?

The standard of care for newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer (NADOC) is represented by surgical debulking followed by systemic platinum-taxanes combination chemotherapy. At the last European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, results from three trials testing three different poly-adenosine-diphosphate-ribose-polymerase (PARP) inhibitors (olaparib, niraparib, veliparib) in first-line therapy of OC have been presented. For the first time, these studies evaluated the efficacy of PARP inhibitors in this setting and the relative predictive biomarkers for patients' selection. The use of a PARP inhibitor is related with prolonged progression free survival (PFS) in the whole population of NADOC, although the magnitude of benefit varies widely among subgroups, highlighting the need to identify specific biological subtypes into clinical practice. In this minireview, we discuss the updated data available from clinical studies in this scenario.