BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer is the gynecological malignancy with the highest mortality rate. Due to late detection and easy recurrence, the 5-year survival rate of advanced ovarian cancer patients is less than 30%. The current standard treatment for ovarian cancer includes platinum-based combination therapy. Most ovarian cancer patients achieve clinical remission
however, the short-term recurrence rate is still high. For patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, who are unwilling to receive chemotherapy or cannot tolerate chemotherapy after multiple lines of chemotherapy, "chemotherapy-free" treatment may be appropriate. This study aimed to investigate the preliminary mechanism of action of the antiangiogenic drug apatinib combined with poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor fluzoparib as a "chemotherapy-free" regimen in the treatment of ovarian cancer patients with homologous recombination proficiency (HRP). METHODS: The HRP cell line SKOV3 was used for the experiments. The cells were treated with apatinib, fluzoparib, and apatinib combined with fluzoparib, respectively. The cell proliferation rate and migration rate were detected by 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2-H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) and scratch assays. Western blot was used to detect the expression of phosphorylated mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase ( CONCLUSIONS: The combination of apatinib and fluzoparib may cause changes in the HR pathway by down-regulating