Dr. Gulley on Take Home Message With Olaparib Plus Durvalumab in mCRPC

Video

James Gulley, MD, PhD, chief, Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, and director, Medical Oncology Service at the National Cancer Institute, discusses the take-home message with the combination of olaparib (Lynparza) plus durvalumab (Imfinzi) in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

James Gulley, MD, PhD, chief, Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, and director, Medical Oncology Service at the National Cancer Institute, discusses the take-home message with the combination of olaparib (Lynparza) plus durvalumab (Imfinzi) in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

A phase II study of olaparib and durvalumab presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium aimed to see if the combination of a PARP inhibitor, olaparib, with a PD-L1 inhibitor, durvalumab, could lead to immune responses across an unselected group of patients. This included patients who did not have a DNA damage pathway mutation. Investigators reported that in the first 17 patients, the combination was safe and about half of the patients experience prostate-specific antigen (PSA) declines of at least 40%.

Gulley says that the take-home message from this research is that there is an early signal of activity for this combination, but the mechanism of action is not understood yet. Many of the patients who responded to the combination did not have DNA damage response pathway mutations, and next steps with this data will aim to understand the immune activity in this population.

Related Videos
Christian Marth, MD, PhD, head, professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Innsbruck Medical University
Mansoor Raza Mirza, MD, chief oncologist, Department of Oncology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital
Judy Hayek, MD, gynecologic oncology fellow, State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate College of Medicine
Leslie M. Randall, MD, MAS, professor, division head, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology – Gynecologic Oncology, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine Obstetrics and Gynecology
Dimitrios Nasioudis, MD, fellow, Gynecologic Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania
Sara Corvigno, MD, PhD, translational researcher, oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
I-Chia (Daniel) Liu, MD
Robert W. Mutter, MD
Saad J. Kenderian, MB, CHB, consultant, Division of Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Immunology, Department of Molecular Medicine, assistant professor, oncology, immunology, medicine, Mayo Clinic
Mary-Ellen Taplin, MD