28 September 2018 - The number of women with ovarian cancer now eligible for a powerful targeted treatment will dramatically increase, after a landmark discovery by Melbourne researchers of why some women respond to the medication.

Just like testing for the cancer-causing BRCA gene mutations has revolutionised the diagnosis and treatment of women at risk of breast and ovarian cancer — as it did for Angelina Jolie — the team has uncovered that they need to be just as precise at knowing how much of the gene is “silenced”, in determining who can benefit from certain treatments.

Lead researcher Professor Clare Scott, of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, said while it was known potent anti-cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors could only work when the BRCA1 gene was silenced, they could not predict in which patients the drug would work.

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