# Veliparib

Source: https://onco.cc/drugs/veliparib/  
OnCo record `veliparib` (Treatment). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Veliparib is a PARP inhibitor that AbbVie tested with chemotherapy in breast cancer. It added nothing to carboplatin before surgery (BrighTNess) and lengthened progression-free but not overall survival with carboplatin and paclitaxel in inherited BRCA advanced disease (BROCADE3), so it was never licensed.

## Summary

Veliparib inhibits the catalytic activity of PARP1 and PARP2 but traps PARP on DNA far less than olaparib or talazoparib, which is why it could be combined with full-dose chemotherapy where the other PARP inhibitors cannot. That property was tested in two phase 3 breast cancer trials. In BrighTNess (634 patients, stage II to III triple-negative disease) paclitaxel with carboplatin and veliparib gave a pathological complete response in 53 percent against 58 percent with paclitaxel and carboplatin and 31 percent with paclitaxel alone, so the gain came from carboplatin; at 4.5 years the event-free survival hazard ratio for the veliparib arm against carboplatin alone was 1.12. In BROCADE3 (509 patients with a germline BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation and HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, up to two prior chemotherapy lines) adding veliparib to carboplatin and paclitaxel improved median progression-free survival from 12.6 to 14.5 months (hazard ratio 0.71, p 0.0016) but final overall survival was 32.4 versus 28.2 months (hazard ratio 0.92, p 0.43), with grade 3 or worse neutropenia in 81 versus 84 percent and thrombocytopenia in 40 versus 28 percent. AbbVie did not file for approval in breast cancer; veliparib remains an investigational agent and the two trials are the reference for why weak PARP trapping with chemotherapy did not translate into survival.

## Fields

- Kind: Treatment
- Status: negative
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Code: ABT-888
- Modality: Small-molecule PARP inhibitor (weak PARP trapper)
- Mechanism: Catalytic inhibition of PARP1 and PARP2 with minimal PARP-DNA trapping; sensitises to platinum and alkylating chemotherapy.
- Toxicity (grade 3+): Neutropenia (grade 3 or worse), with carboplatin and paclitaxel 81%; Thrombocytopenia (grade 3 or worse) 40%

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veliparib
- BrighTNess primary results (Lancet Oncology 2018): https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(18)30111-6
- BrighTNess 4-year follow-up (Annals of Oncology 2022): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annonc.2022.01.009
- BROCADE3 primary results (Lancet Oncology 2020): https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(20)30447-2
- BROCADE3 final overall survival (European Journal of Cancer 2024): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2024.113580

## Connected records

- cancers: [Early triple-negative breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc-early/), [HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/breast-hr-positive/), [Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc-metastatic/), [Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc/)
- technologies: [PARP inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/parp-inhibitor/)
- targets: [BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD)](https://onco.cc/targets/brca/), [PARP](https://onco.cc/targets/parp/)
- companies: [AbbVie (incl. ImmunoGen, Capstan)](https://onco.cc/companies/abbvie/)
- trials: [BrighTNess](https://onco.cc/trials/brightness/), [BROCADE3](https://onco.cc/trials/brocade3/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/veliparib.json