PARP inhibitors work by disabling DNA base excision repair, which normally fixes DNA damage caused by chemotherapy agents like platinum. When PARP is inhibited, single-strand DNA breaks caused by chemotherapy cannot be repaired, and instead cause double-strand breaks during DNA replication. This ultimately leads to cell death in cancer cells. PARP inhibitors are particularly effective for cancers with defects in homologous recombination repair genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, as these cancers rely more heavily on PARP-mediated repair. Several PARP inhibitors are approved or in clinical trials for ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and other solid tumors.
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