I just wanna know where da GOLD at.

The GOLD trial published this month in Lancet Oncology was designed to test the efficacy of the PARP inhibitor olaparib in addition to paclitaxel in advanced gastric cancer. PARP inhibitors have shown efficacy in patients with germline BRCA mutated ovarian or breast cancer (via the illustrious synthetic lethality). The hallmark of BRCA-mutated cancers is defective homologous recombination repair (HR). Therefore, PARP inhibitors are being explored across all HR defective malignancies. Gastric cancer is one such disease where as many as 16-22% have a deficiency in ATM, a key mediator of HR. GOLD included patients regardless of ATM status, and, as expected, 18% of enrollees had an aATM deficiency. Unfortunately, neither the overall population nor the subset with ATM deficiency benefited from the addition of olaparib to paclitaxel. Gastric cancer has become quite the GOLDen corral of targeted agents, for $12.99 all you can try with frequent Friday morning bathroom trips guaranteed.