J Cell Physiol. 2020;1–9. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcp © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 Received: 30 July 2019 | Accepted: 19 December 2019 DOI: 10.1002/jcp.29440 REVIEW ARTICLE Targeting cervical cancer: Is there a role for poly (ADP‐ribose) polymerase inhibition? Federica Tomao 1 | Giusi Santangelo 1 | Lucia Musacchio 1 | Violante Di Donato 1 | Margherita Fischetti 1 | Antonella Giancotti 1 | Giorgia Perniola 1 | Maria Cristina Petrella 2 | Marco Monti 1 | Innocenza Palaia 1 | Ludovico Muzii 1 | Pierluigi Benedetti Panici 1 1 Department of Maternal and Child Health and Urological Sciences, University “Sapienza”, Policlinico “Umberto I”, Rome, Italy 2 AOUC Azienda Ospedaliero‐Universitaria Careggi, Reparto di Oncologia Medica, Florence, Italy Correspondence Lucia Musacchio, MD., Department of Maternal and Child Health and Urological Sciences, University “Sapienza”, Policlinico “Umberto I” Rome, Italy, Viale del policlinico 155, 00161, Rome, Italy. Email: lucia.musacchio@uniroma1.it Abstract Patients with metastatic and recurrent cervical cancer (CC) have a poor prognosis with limited palliative treatment options. Increasing understanding of the cellular aberrations inherent to cancer cells has allowed the development of therapies to target biological pathways, an important step toward the individualization of cancer therapy. The poly (ADP‐ribose) polymerase (PARP) family of enzymes is important in several DNA repair pathways. Drugs that inhibit these PARP enzymes have been investigated in many types of cancer and their application in the treatment of gynecologic malignancies has rapidly evolved. Although the majority of data for PARPi in gynecologic malignancies has been specifically regarding ovarian cancer, their role in the treatment of uterine and CC is currently being investigated. This review will examine PARP inhibitors in CC, summarizes the critical clinical trials of PARP inhibitors that have been completed, provides an overview of the on‐going trials, presents the confirmed conclusions and notes the issues that need to be addressed in future studies. KEYWORDS cervical cancer, gynecological cancer, intraepithelial cervical lesion, niraparib, olaparib, Parp inhibitors, rucaparib, veliparib 1 | INTRODUCTION Cervical cancer (CC) is the fourth most frequent tumor and the fourth cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide accounting for about 569,847 new cases and 311,365 deaths every year (Bray et al., 2018). It is also one of the most common gynecological malignancies diagnosed during pregnancy although, fortunately, it is a rare event (Perrone et al., 2019). The major tumor burden can be observed in less developed regions, representing alone 12% of all female cancers. Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is the etiologic factor responsible for the development of almost all CC cases and is also commonly associated with oropharyngeal cancer (Di Domenico et al., 2018). The discrepancy in terms of incidence and mortality of CC between developed and developing countries is probably due to the different diffusion of screening programs consisting of Pap smear, HPV DNA test and Vaccination strategies (Bray et al., 2018; D'Andrilli, Bovicelli, & Giordano, 2010). According to international guidelines, the standard treatment of CC consists of surgery in early‐stage tumors, of concomitant chemoradiation or neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radical surgery in locally advanced disease and of chemotherapy alone for metastatic or recurrent disease (NCCN guidelines). However, although early‐stage and locally advanced disease can be treated with potential curative intent (Pimple, Mishra, & Shastri, 2016),