[Medical treatment options in BRCA-associated cancers].

Germinal or somatic mutations of the BRCA genes may serve as therapeutic targets. Deficient functioning of the BRCA genes render the cancer vulnerable to such therapeutic interventions as chemotherapy with DNA-targeted agents and PARP inhibitors targeting DNA repair capacity. Although BRCA mutations may be detected in a large variety of cancers, the mentioned specific therapies are efficient in the so called BRCA-associated cancers only including ovarian, breast, pancreatic, prostate cancers and the rare uterine sarcomas. While in ovarian and prostate carcinomas both germinal and somatic, in breast and pancreatic cancers exclusively germinal, and in uterine sarcomas mostly somatic mutations specify the tumor as BRCA-dependent; platinum-sensitivity in ovarian cancer may replace BRCA testing by indicating the presence of frequent DNA repair deficiency. Platinum-based chemotherapy is frequently efficient in BRCA-dependent cancers, while PARP inhibitors yet registered for ovarian, breast and pancreatic cancers bring paradigm change in the treatment of ovarian cancer and provide an additional treatment option of the others.