Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Dr. Shaveta Vinayak's, with Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, research is focused on an aggressive subtype known as triple-negative breast cancer, which tends to affect younger people.

Dr. Vinayak designs and leads clinical trials that explore targeted therapies like immune checkpoint inhibitors, which help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells, and PARP inhibitors, a type of drug that targets DNA repair defects in cancer cells. PARP inhibitors may hold particular promise for people with BRCA-related or other DNA repair mutation related cancers. 

Dr. Vinayak recently completed a clinical trial that showed that combining a niraparib (a PARP inhibitor) with pembrolizumab (an immunotherapy) demonstrated promising antitumor activity in a clinical trial of patients with advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.  Patients with BRCA mutations showed the best responses.

Dr. Vinayak is seeking funding to expand the use of PARP inhibitors in metastatic breast cancer, beyond BRCA mutation, and to identify patients who may benefit the most from this therapy, using novel imaging.

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