PARP Inhibitors in Prostate Cancer–The Preclinical Rationale and Current Clinical Development
G C A T T A C G G C A T genes Review PARP Inhibitors in Prostate Cancer–the Preclinical Rationale and Current Clinical Development Verneri Virtanen 1, Kreetta Paunu 1, Johanna K. Ahlskog 2, Reka Varnai 3,4 , Csilla Sipeky 5 and Maria Sundvall 1,6,* 1 Institute of Biomedicine, and Cancer Research Laboratories, Western Cancer Centre FICAN West, University of Turku, FI-20520 Turku, Finland 2 Faculty of Science and Engineering, Åbo Akademi University, and Turku Bioscience, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, FI-20520 Turku, Finland 3 Department of Primary Health Care, University of Pécs, H-7623 Pécs, Hungary 4 Faculty of Health Sciences, Doctoral School of Health Sciences, University of Pécs, H-7621 Pécs, Hungary 5 Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, FI-20520 Turku, Finland 6 Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Turku University Hospital, FI-20521 Turku, Finland * Correspondence: maria.sundvall@utu.fi; Tel.: +358-2-313-0000 Received: 3 June 2019; Accepted: 22 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019 Abstract: Prostate cancer is globally the second most commonly diagnosed cancer type in men. Recent studies suggest that mutations in DNA repair genes are associated with aggressive forms of prostate cancer and castration resistance. Prostate cancer with DNA repair defects may be vulnerable to therapeutic targeting by Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. PARP enzymes modify target proteins with ADP-ribose in a process called PARylation and are in particular involved in single strand break repair. The rationale behind the clinical trials that led to the current use of PARP inhibitors to treat cancer was to target the dependence of BRCA-mutant cancer cells on the PARP-associated repair pathway due to deficiency in homologous recombination.
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