A study published in Clinical Cancer Research found that patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had germline or somatic mutations in DNA repair genes had superior clinical outcomes after platinum-based chemotherapy, as compared to patients without these mutations.1
Moreover, biallelic mutation of homologous recombination (HR) genes showed the best association with this genomic characteristic, independent of germline versus somatic origin. Given these findings, researchers indicated that determining the homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) status is ideally needed at the time of diagnosis to optimize survival and refine treatment selection for this patient population.
“Our data support the use of platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with defects in various HR genes,” senior author Eileen O’Reilly, MD, medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan…
