A TWICE-a-day pill designed to fight breast cancer could offer hope to thousands of patients with other forms of the disease, it was announced yesterday.
In a British breakthrough, scientists have shown the drug disables cancers in the womb, prostate, colon and skin that are triggered by genetic mutations.
The discovery, which was immediately hailed as “excellent” and “very convincing” by experts, is particularly good news because the drug has few side-effects. And that means clinical trials could start within months.
Professor Alan Ashworth, director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research, who led the trial, said: “Our findings are very exciting. As far as a cure for cancer goes, I think this takes us closer.”
Many drugs to treat cancer work by intercepting the signals that tell tumours to grow.
Breast cancer cell
But the drug at the centre of this study, called olaparib, works by making cancer cells more vulnerable, attacking their Achilles heel and breaking down their defences.
Earlier this year there was great enthusiasm when the same British team revealed it could kill breast cancer cells in women whose tumours were caused by mutations in their BRCA genes. Around one in 20 cases of breast cancer is attributed to these genes.
The trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that tumours stopped growing or shrank in around half of volunteers, all of whom had been told their cancer was incurable.
Now, in a separate study, the team has found olaparib may also work in people whose cancers are caused by a mutation in a different gene, called PTEN.
A far larger number of cancer victims have this genetic mutation so this latest discovery could have implications for the treatment of thousands or even tens of thousands.
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February 17th, 2010 at 7:12 am
A prostate cancer ‘wonder pill’ could be on the market next year.
Abiraterone hit the headlines two years ago, with stunning trial results in which it shrank tumours in 80 per cent of men whose cancer had spread throughout their body.
The once-a-day drug also eased pain in many and was hailed as the biggest breakthrough in the field for 60 years.
Now further tests have underlined its potential and larger trials are under way. If they are successful, it could be prescribed to men in the advanced stages of the disease as early as next year, giving them the hope of precious extra months with their families.
Abiraterone is a ‘home-grown’ drug, discovered by scientists funded by Cancer Research UK and working at the Institute for Cancer Research at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital.
It works by blocking testosterone, including any made by the tumour itself, from fuelling the cancer’s growth.
In the latest study, it was given in pill form to 47 men in advanced stages of the cancer who had exhausted all other treatment options, including a drug called docetaxel.
Researcher Johann de Bono said: ‘Docetaxel is an important drug but it extends life for an average of just two to three months, so there is a desperate need to improve options for late-stage patients. Abiraterone shrank or stabilised tumours for an average of almost six months, which is a very impressive result.’
February 18th, 2010 at 5:19 am
Women with breast cancer who take aspirin at least twice a week can more than double their chance of surviving, researchers say.
The greatest protection comes from taking the drug two, three, four or five times a week, a study has found.
They cut the risk of dying by 71 per cent and the risk of the cancer spreading by 60 per cent.
Taking aspirin on six or seven days cut the death risk by 64 per cent, but the risk of spreading fell only 43 per cent.
The findings of the U.S. study provide the most compelling evidence yet of the power of the cheap painkiller.
Previous research has suggested that aspirin can protect against bowel cancer, although results for other cancers, such as breast and prostate, were less clear-cut.
The latest dramatic results came from a 30-year project tracking the health of 238,000 nurses.