Targeted therapy and immunotherapy: Diamonds in the rough in the treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer

Front Pharmacol. 2023 Mar 24:14:1131342. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1131342. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Currently, for ovarian cancer, which has the highest mortality rate among all gynecological cancers, the standard treatment protocol is initial tumor cytoreductive surgery followed by platinum-based combination chemotherapy. Although the survival rate after standard treatment has improved, the therapeutic effect of traditional chemotherapy is very limited due to problems such as resistance to platinum-based drugs and recurrence. With the advent of the precision medicine era, molecular targeted therapy has gradually entered clinicians' view, and individualized precision therapy has been realized, surpassing the limitations of traditional therapy. The detection of genetic mutations affecting treatment, especially breast cancer susceptibility gene (BRCA) mutations and mutations of other homologous recombination repair defect (HRD) genes, can guide the targeted drug treatment of patients, effectively improve the treatment effect and achieve a better patient prognosis. This article reviews different sites and pathways of targeted therapy, including angiogenesis, cell cycle and DNA repair, and immune and metabolic pathways, and the latest research progress from preclinical and clinical trials related to ovarian cancer therapy.

Keywords: angiogenesis inhibitor; clinical trials; epithelial ovarian cancer; immunotherapy; poly (ADP ribose) polymerase inhibitor; targeted therapy; tumor microenvironment.

Publication types

  • Review

Grants and funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81872430); Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Nos. 2019T120281, 2019M661304); Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (No. LBH-Z18109); Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (No. H2017049); Beijing Kanghua Foundation for the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Project No. KH-2021-LQJJ-008) to B-RX.