New Drug for BRCA Carriers with Advanced Cancer

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Will a new platinum-based drug be effective against advanced cancer in carriers of the BRCA mutations?

Platinum-based drugs such as cisplatin are known to be more effective at treating cancers in carriers of DNA repair mutations, including BRCA1 and 2. Researchers are testing the safety and cancer-fighting abilities of the new compound BTP-114 in pancreatic, ovarian, breast, and prostate cancers of patients with BRCA and similar mutations.

The Difference Between BTP-114 and Cisplatin

At the heart of BTP-114 is a prodrug (one that gets turned into an active drug form in the body) of cisplatin, a platinum-based drug that disrupts DNA and kills cancer cells. Once in the body BTP-114 unites with serum albumin (the most abundant protein in human blood). It is then better able to reach the tumor and stay in the body longer, making it more available for use by cancer cells than standard cisplatin.

Participating in the Trial

This clinical trial has two phases. In the first part participants receive increasing doses of BTP-114, to find the dose of the drug that can be tolerated. Participants in the second part will receive the dose determined in the first part of the trial. They will then be monitored to see how effective the drug is against advanced pancreatic, ovarian, prostate, triple-negative breast cancer, and other tumors that carry DNA repair genetic mutations.

We encourage you to consult your physicians for clinical trials that may be right for you. The website ClinicalTrials.gov provides more details about this trial as well as many others. You can visit the EmergingMed Trial Finder for a listing of all active pancreatic cancer clinical trials.

The status of this trial is unknown, at the present. Many other trials for patients with genetic mutations are still looking for participants. 

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