Susan Fox, a 60-year-old woman living in Melbourne, Victoria state of Australia, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and has been undergoing radiation therapy for the past 14 years.
The battle against this woman's cancer with constant chemotherapy that exhausted her has now become more positive with a new drug, which has proven its ability to prevent development. of ovarian cancer cells by prolonging the period of disease remission after each chemical infusion.
Ms. Fox is participating in an international clinical trial for olaparib, a drug known as PARP inhibitor .
Taking the drug twice a day, continuously for 18 months, Ms. Fox believes it was this miracle drug that helped her no longer feel the impact of cancer since the most recent chemotherapy.
This drug works to block the activity of PARD, a DNA-related protein. The trial was conducted at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, chaired by Dr. Clare Scott, in collaboration with other hospitals in Australia, Europe, Israel and the United States.
A new drug known as olaparib can prevent redevelopment
of ovarian cancer (Photo: TheHindu)
Dr. Clare Scott said this drug is effective for 50% of ovarian cancer patients. More than half of ovarian cancer patients have a defect in how to repair DNA of cancer cells and this is the point that scientists can exploit to find effective treatment. If it can prevent DNA repair properly in cancer cells, cancer cells will be destroyed.
Unlike other cancers, there are no reliable measures to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage, an incurable disease that kills up to 800 Australians each year.
Dr. Scott said that when diagnosing ovarian cancer, patients usually have advanced stage and relapse is common . Most ovarian cancer patients have surgery to remove the cancer as much as possible, followed by chemical treatment to destroy the remaining cancer cells.
On average, four out of every five patients initially responded positively to chemotherapy with the cancer shrinking, but many of these reactions were often short, recurring cancer cells and cannot treat effectively.
Experiments show that olaparib can double the recovery time after chemotherapy, from four to eight months.
It is expected that this drug, after conducting a third trial on a larger scale, will be widely used within the next 5 years.
