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'Smart bomb' drug attacks breast cancer | adelaidenow
DOCTORS have successfully dropped the first "smart bomb" on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone.
In a key test involving nearly 1000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report tonight at a cancer conference in Chicago.
More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure.
After two years, 65 per cent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 per cent of those in a comparison group given two standard cancer drugs.
In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group.
"The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live," said the study's leader, Dr Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. "This is a major step forward."
A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the market within a year.
"People don't lose their hair, they don't throw up. They don't need nausea medicines, they don't need transfusions," said Dr Blackwell, who has consulted in the past for Genentech, the study's sponsor.
"The data are pretty compelling," said Dr Michael Link, a pediatric cancer specialist at Stanford University who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the group hosting the Chicago conference where the results were being presented.
"It's sort of a smart bomb kind of therapy, a poison delivered to the tumor ... and not a lot of other collateral damage to other organs," he said.
DOCTORS have successfully dropped the first "smart bomb" on breast cancer, using a drug to deliver a toxic payload to tumor cells while leaving healthy ones alone.
In a key test involving nearly 1000 women with very advanced disease, the experimental treatment extended by several months the time women lived without their cancer getting worse, doctors planned to report tonight at a cancer conference in Chicago.
More importantly, the treatment seems likely to improve survival; it will take more time to know for sure.
After two years, 65 per cent of women who received it were still alive versus 47 per cent of those in a comparison group given two standard cancer drugs.
In fact, so many women on the new treatment are still alive that researchers cannot yet determine average survival for the group.
"The absolute difference is greater than one year in how long these people live," said the study's leader, Dr Kimberly Blackwell of Duke University. "This is a major step forward."
A warning to hopeful patients: the drug is still experimental, so not available yet. Its backers hope it can reach the market within a year.
"People don't lose their hair, they don't throw up. They don't need nausea medicines, they don't need transfusions," said Dr Blackwell, who has consulted in the past for Genentech, the study's sponsor.
"The data are pretty compelling," said Dr Michael Link, a pediatric cancer specialist at Stanford University who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the group hosting the Chicago conference where the results were being presented.
"It's sort of a smart bomb kind of therapy, a poison delivered to the tumor ... and not a lot of other collateral damage to other organs," he said.
