Background: Ovarian cancer is one of the major causes of death in women worldwide. Despite improvements in conventional treatment approaches, such as surgery and chemotherapy, a majority of patients with advanced ovarian cancer experience relapse and eventually succumb to the disease; the outcome of patients remains poor. Hence, new therapeutic strategies are urgently required. The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is activated in approximately 70 % of ovarian cancers, resulting in hyperactive signaling cascades that relate to cellular growth, proliferation, survival, metabolism, and angiogenesis. Consistent with this, a number of clinical studies are focusing on PI3K pathway as an attractive target in the treatment of ovarian cancer. In this review, we present an overview of PI3K pathway as well as its pathological aberrations reported in ovarian cancer. We also discuss inhibitors of PI3K pathway that are currently under clinical investigations and the challenges these inhibitors face in future clinical utility.
Methods: PubMed was searched for articles of relevance to ovarian cancer and the PI3K pathway. In addition, the ClinicalTrials.gov was also scanned for data on novel therapeutic inhibitors targeting the PI3K pathway.
Results: Genetic aberrations at different levels of PI3K pathway are frequently observed in ovarian cancer, resulting in hyperactivation of this pathway. The alterations of this pathway make the PI3K pathway an attractive therapeutic target in ovarian cancer. Currently, several inhibitors of PI3K pathway, such as PI3K/AKT inhibitors, rapamycin analogs for mTOR inhibition, and dual PI3K/mTOR inhibitors are in clinical testing in patients with ovarian cancer.
Conclusions: PI3K pathway inhibitors have shown great promise in the treatment of ovarian cancer. However, further researches on selection patients that respond to PI3K inhibitors and exploration of effective combinatorial therapies are required to improve the management of ovarian cancer.