Emerging Role of PARP Inhibitors in Metastatic Prostate Cancer

Purpose of review: We highlight the clinical development of Poly (ADP-Ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in prostate cancer.

Recent findings: Approximately 10 to 30% of metastatic prostate cancer patients carry germline or somatic mutations in DNA repair pathways. BRCA2 is the most commonly mutated gene in DNA damage repair pathways. Because of its critical function in homologous recombination repair (HRR) machinery, deleterious BRCA2 mutation enables synthetic lethality to a PARP inhibitor. Olaparib demonstrated clinical benefit in patients with deleterious mutations in HRR-related genes and most clearly in patients with BRCA2 mutations. Olaparib received the US FDA approval or mCRPC patients with a qualifying HRR gene mutation in May 2020. Rucaparib received an accelerated FDA approval for patients with BRCA1- or BRCA2-mutated mCRPC based on 43% objective response rate in a phase II study. To expand the application of a PARP inhibitor, several trials have evaluated various combination strategies with an androgen receptor signaling inhibitor, immunotherapy, radium-223, and others. While no PARP inhibitor combination regimen has been approved, promising data from a PARP inhibitor and an ASI combination have been reported. PARP inhibitor represents a standard treatment for patient with mCRPC with germline or somatic mutations in BRCA2 and other HRR pathway genes.