Barbara Cortez was 7 years old when her mother succumbed to breast cancer at age 36 and in 2017, at age 45, she, too, was diagnosed with the disease. After four months of chemotherapy to treat a 5-centimeter tumor in her right breast, she underwent a double mastectomy followed by radiation therapy. By July 2019, the cancer had spread to her bones and liver.
Cortez, now 52, survived that setback and is in remission, thanks to Mohammadbagher Ziari, MD director of the UCI Health Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center’s community cancer network. Ziari told her, “I’m not going to give you any false hope. But there’s another drug that has just been put on the market and we are going to fight for you.”
The medication, olaparib, was designed to block an enzyme that cancer cells need to repair their DNA. It had proven especially effective against ovarian cancer in women with mutations of the BRCA gene and its use was later expanded to treat metastatic breast cancer patients like Cortez, who also carries the BRCA mutation.