[Cancer therapy by PARP inhibitors]

Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases(PARP) synthesize the ADP-ribose polymers onto proteins and play a role in DNA repair. PARP inhibitors block the repair of single-strand breaks, which in turn gives rise to double-strand breaks during DNA replication. Thus, PARP inhibitors elicit synthetic lethality in cancer with BRCA1/2 loss-of-function mutations that hamper homologous recombination repair of double-strand breaks. Olaparib, the first-in-class PARP inhibitor, was approved for treatment of BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer in Europe and the United States in 2014. Other PARP inhibitors under clinical trials include rucaparib, niraparib, veliparib, and the "PARP-trapping" BMN-673. BRCA1/2 sequencing is an FDA-approved companion diagnostics, which predicts the cancer vulnerability to PARP inhibition. Together, synthetic lethal PARP inhibition is a novel promising strategy for cancer intervention even in cases without prominent driver oncogenes.