PittPharmacy faculty member Da Yang, MD, PhD was awarded a grant funded by NIH under the RPCI-UPCI’s SPORE in Ovarian Cancer to research ovarian cancer personalized therapy. As the most lethal gynecological malignancy in the United States, ovarian cancer is notorious for its drug resistance. In Dec 2014, the U.S. FDA approved olaparib (a PARP inhibitor) for the treatment of ovarian cancer. However, the olaparib is specifically approved for treatment of BRCA1/2 mutated patients, which account for only 15% of OvCa patients. The question remains: can PARPi show a therapeutic effect for the 85% of BRCA wild-type (BRCAwt) ovarian cancer patients? In the funded project, Yang and his colleague will investigate the synergetic effect between recently FDA-approved olaparib and a newly discovered miRNA gene (miR-506) in the vast majority of BRCAwt ovarian cancer patients. Successful completion of the study will expand the proportion of the patients who can benefit from the olaparib, and help to better stratify the population of patients eligible for clinical trials for other PARPis in the near future. Yang is an assistant professor in the pharmaceutical sciences department at PittPharmacy.
