Skip to main content

Lung cancer pill may get second chance after tests

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The lung cancer pill Iressa has shown surprising results for patients with advanced disease where it has been at least as effective as a standard chemotherapy treatment, researchers reported on Thursday.

Patients who got the once-a-day pill made by AstraZeneca lived as long as those given the chemotherapy treatment Sanofi-Aventis' Taxotere or docetaxel, the international team of researchers found.

This is second-line treatment, traditionally offered after a course of combined chemotherapies that can last months and is still considered the best approach to lung cancer.

"The study is the first time in lung cancer that an oral biological agent has been tested head-to-head against chemotherapy," Dr. Edward Kim of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues wrote in the Lancet medical journal.

Kim's team tested 1,466 patients in 24 countries who had completed a first course of standard chemotherapy. Half got Iressa as second-line treatment and half got docetaxel. Both sets of patients lived about as long -- eight months on average.

Dr. Michael Cullen of University Hospital Birmingham in Britain, who wrote a commentary on the findings, noted that Iressa is far less toxic than chemotherapy, including Taxotere, and is very convenient to take.

"I think there will be patients for whom it will be favored," he said.

But he said in a telephone interview tests supposed to show who would do better on so-called targeted therapies like Iressa failed to predict who would benefit from them.

Iressa was once viewed as a likely blockbuster for the Anglo-Swedish group which makes it, but its failure in a clinical trial in 2004 dealt a major blow for the product and it is now seen by analysts as a niche medicine.

SIDE EFFECTS

Lung cancer kills 1.2 million people a year and is the top cause of cancer death globally. Many drugs are used to treat it but almost always stop working eventually, in part because most patients are not diagnosed until tumors have spread.

Chemotherapy, infused over a period of several hours, targets rapidly growing cells and thus often has severe side effects such as nausea, diarrhea and hair loss.

Iressa, known generically as gefitinib, is a monoclonal antibody, a genetically engineered immune system molecule that targets a molecule called epidermal growth factor receptor or EGFR. Tumors use EGFR to grow themselves blood supplies. Such targeted therapies have far fewer side effects.

AstraZeneca stopped selling Iressa in the United States after tests showed it only helped about 10 percent of patients. But it continued trials, including this one, in part because there was tantalizing evidence that some people -- notably non-smokers, Asians and women -- did better on Iressa.

And companies such as Genzyme Corp. now market tests that show whether cancer patients have the EGFR mutation and others targeted by Iressa and similar drugs such as Genentech's Tarceva.

Cullen noted that only a small proportion of the patients benefited from being given the second-line treatment drugs. but said some lived a long time. He described one of his patients who survived a year on Iressa before dying of a stroke.

Popular posts from this blog

Lung cancer survival rate - Stage 2 lung cancer

When a person looks for a medical professional about the stage 2 lung cancer, one of the first questions that come to mind is: what is my lung cancer survival rate? This is largely influenced by the medical records showing that lung cancer is one of the lowest chances of survival of cancers in the world. One must realize that these statistics are only numbers and a variety of factors that can affect your chances of being cured. The lung cancer survival rate is affected by several variables. One such variable is age. Younger people tend to have a greater chance of survival for people over 50. This is due to the strong natural defenses younger than the older. Medical records also indicate that women with lung cancer in stage 2 have a greater ability to be cured of their male counterparts the parties. The spread of malignant tumor is a very important factor in determining the survival of lung cancer exchange rate. The tumors may spread from the lung tissu...

Analysis: Life saving lung cancer test to set off cost debate

By Bill Berkrot NEW YORK | Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:07pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - A landmark study showing that routine lung screening of heavy smokers and former smokers using low dose CT scans could save thousands of lives is sure to set off a fierce debate about the cost of such testing on an overburdened healthcare system. The U.S. National Cancer Institute studied more than 53,000 people between the ages of 55 and 74 deemed at high risk of developing lung cancer. It found that screening with the three-dimensional X-rays cut deaths by 20 percent. Details of the study and a discussion of its implications were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, lending additional weight to initial findings that were released in November. The discussion noted that radiologists using more advanced CT equipment than was available for the study could lead to an even larger reduction in lung cancer deaths. At the same time, the potential for many more false positive results could ri...

What is Lung Cancer - Incidence, Signs, Symptoms, Causation, Prognosis and Treatment

INTRODUCTION Lung cancer may also be the most tragic cancer because in most cases, it might have been prevented, 87% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. Lung cancer has long been the most common cause of cancer death in men and since 1987 it has also become the most common cause of cancer death in women. Lung cancer is the second most commonly occurring form of cancer in most western countries and although the lung cancer incidence is less common in developing countries, the rapid increase in the popularity of smoking will see the number of lung cancer sufferers in those countries quickly catch up with the western world. Lung cancers can arise in any part of the lung, and 90%-95% of cancers of the lung are thought to arise from the epithelial, or lining cells of the larger and smaller airways (bronchi and bronchioles); for this reason, lung cancers are sometimes called bronchogenic carcinomas or bronchogenic cancers. The most common type of lung cancers are epidermoid carcinoma...