Dr. Hardesty on Bevacizumab/PARP Inhibitor Combination in Ovarian Cancer

Melissa Hardesty, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Alaska Women’s Cancer Center, discusses the safety and efficacy of the bevacizumab (Avastin)/PARP inhibitor combination in ovarian cancer. She presented phase II findings from the OVARIO trial at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Bevacizumab and niraparib (Zejula) is an aggressive and effective combination, particularly in upfront maintenance, and Hardesty says this won’t become the standard of care for all patients. There is a small fraction of patients who will be cured after frontline maintenance therapy, so physicians don’t want to put patients on 2 additional years of adjuvant therapy if they don’t need it. Hardesty says the best patient population for this combination would be those who have a suspected short disease-free interval. An example of these patients would be those who are diagnosed early on with stage IV disease.

Bevacizumab monotherapy has shown activity in these patient populations.