PARP inhibitors show promise

NORFOLK,Va - Twice a week a nurse at Virginia Oncology Associates in Norfolk plugs PARP inhibitors and chemotherapy into Sharon Price's body.

"I just put my head down and go, it's...working so that's really all that matters," Price told WAVY.com.

She has a kind of breast cancer classified as triple negative. When it spread to her lung the 39-year-old mother of two small children knew her chances were not good. She enrolled in the study for PARP and prayed.

Her progress after a year and a half is even surprising doctors.

"Typically patients with triple negative breast cancers will have response for 4 to 5 months. To be this far out with no evidence of disease is clearly very promising," said Dr. Michael Danso.

Dr. Danso explained that PARP is an enzyme our cells use to repair damaged DNA.

In healthy cells that's a good thing, but when doctors destroy cancer cells we don't want PARP fixing them.

Parp inhibitors keep the cancer cells from regrowing once chemo kills them.

Price looks and feels healthy. The only problem is no one knows how long she has to take the drug.

"So potentially patients could continue with this agent indefinitely," said Dr. Danso.

While hours of infusions are not convenient, Price believes just as a kidney patient needs dialysis to live she needs PARP inhibitors to keep on.

"It's a chronic disease for me now, it's something that I'm going to have to manage now for probably the rest of my hopefully long life," she said.

Price hopes researchers will one day find a way to put the treatment in a pill form, but until then she'll just take her work along with her to treatment twice a week.

If you are interested in the study and also have a triple negative metastatic breast cancer click here to visit the Virginia Oncology Associates research page.