Can a Common Blood Pressure Drug Make Cancer Treatment…

Can a Common Blood Pressure Drug Make Cancer Treatment More Effective? A medication that has been used for years to treat high blood pressure may also enhance the effectiveness of a major class of targeted cancer therapies, according to new research from Dartmouth Cancer Center. Researchers found that telmisartan, an FDA-approved angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), significantly improved the anticancer activity of olaparib, a PARP inhibitor commonly used to treat cancers with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. The findings, published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, suggest the combination could potentially benefit patients whose tumors would not typically respond to PARP inhibitors. PARP inhibitors work by exploiting defects in a cancer cell's DNA repair machinery, making them particularly effective in tumors with homologous recombination repair deficiencies. Howeve