Dr. Maughan Discusses Abiraterone Plus Olaparib in mCRPC

Benjamin Maughan, MD, PharmD, instructor, Division of Medical Oncology, Huntsman Cancer Institute, discusses the combination of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and olaparib (Lynparza) in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

The combination of the antiandrogen agent abiraterone and the PARP inhibitor olaparib demonstrated a 35% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared with abiraterone alone in pretreated patients with mCRPC. Findings presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting demonstrated a median progression-free survival of 13.8 months with the combination compared with 8.2 months with single-agent abiraterone (HR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.44-0.97; P = .034).

Maughan says that although these are positive results, another study of abiraterone plus a PARP inhibitor—veliparib—showed a benefit only in biomarker-positive patients. This makes interpreting the results with abiraterone plus olaparib a challenge, he adds, as some of the data are contradictory. More details on the different patient populations needs to be released after further investigation is completed.