Targeted therapy in ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is the most common cause of mortality of tumors from gynecologic origin and is often diagnosed after patients have already progressed to advanced disease stage. The current standard of care for treatment of ovarian cancer includes cytoreductive surgery followed by adjuvant chemotherapy. Unfortunately, many patients will recur and ultimately die from their disease. Targeted therapies have been evaluated in ovarian cancer as a method to overcome resistant disease. Angiogenesis inhibitors have shown success in many tumor types and have also demonstrated promise in trials involving patients with ovarian cancer. PARP inhibitors may be potentially active agents in patients with BRCA-associated ovarian cancer. Trials that have evaluated combinations of targeted agents have often revealed untoward toxicities, thus tempering enthusiasm for this approach.