By Andrew Pollack
CHICAGO, Illinois — Using two opposite strategies, one focused and one broad, scientists say they have made progress in taming two of the most intractable types of cancer.
The focused approach shrank tumors significantly in a majority of patients with advanced lung cancer marked by a specific genetic abnormality.
Even though the clinical trial was small (just 82 people, with no control group), the results were considered so striking for such sick patients that the study will be featured Sunday at the main session of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.
“This is a phenomenal example of finding the right patient and the right drug very early on,” said Dr. Pasi Janne of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who was involved in the trial.
Melanoma study uses drug to accelerate immune system
The broader strategy uses a drug that could potentially become a universal treatment for all types of cancer. It works by releasing a brake on the body’s immune system, letting it attack the cancer more vigorously.
In a study of patients who had advanced melanoma, those who got an experimental drug lived a median of about 10 months, compared with 6.4 months for those in a control group. After two years, about 23 percent of those who got the drug were alive, compared with 14 percent in the control group.
Lung cancer and melanoma are among the hardest cancers to treat. So the studies are being viewed as significant advances, though far from cures.
Dr. Steven J. O’Day of the Angeles Clinic and Research Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., a lead investigator in the melanoma trial, called the result “historic,” and added, “This is the first randomized placebo-controlled trial ever to show a survival benefit in Stage 4 melanoma.”
Bristol-Myers Squibb, which sponsored the trial, is planning to apply for regulatory approval to sell the drug, ipilimumab.
Lung cancer patient in study praises ‘miracle
The lung cancer drug, by contrast, blocks an aberrant protein called ALK that is found in only about 5 percent of non-small-cell lung tumors. But in patients whose tumors have this aberration, the drug seems to work wonders. The tumors shrank significantly in 57 percent of the 82 patients, and they remained stable in 30 percent more.
Beverly Sotir, 71, of Belmont, Mass., who has been taking the pills as part of the trial since July, said her tumors had shrunk without debilitating side effects. “For someone who’s been on chemo before, this is like a miracle drug,” she said. “You feel yourself. You look yourself.”
Pfizer, which sponsored the study, has started a more definitive trial aimed at winning approval of the drug, crizotinib.
There are caveats. The effects of crizotinib can eventually wear off, though 72 percent of the patients in the trial were free of cancer progression for six months.
Story Compliments Of The Plain Dealer / New York Times
