Dr. Borst on Homologous Recombination Deficiency in Patients With Ovarian Cancer

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Matthew Borst, MD, director, GYN/Oncology, Banner Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, clinical assistant professor of medicine, University of Arizona, Arizona Oncology, discusses homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) in patients with ovarian cancer.

Matthew Borst, MD, director, GYN/Oncology, Banner Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, clinical assistant professor of medicine, University of Arizona, Arizona Oncology, discusses homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) in patients with ovarian cancer.

Everyone has BRCA1/2 genes which help repair double-strand DNA breaks that people encounter in daily life. If a patient has germline BRCA1/2 abnormalities, they have an intrinsic vulnerability to not repair double-strand breaks. About 50% of high-grade serous ovarian cancers have HRD or BRCA abnormalities in the somatic tumor.

That is something that physicians can take advantage of therapeutically by adding a PARP inhibitor, which inhibits the ability to repair single-strand breaks. Over time, the tumor cells accumulate multiple single-strand breaks, which will convert to double-strand breaks because they lack intact or wild-type BRCA capabilities. Subsequently, the tumor cells preferentially die, says Borst.

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