Lung cancer patients who received a drug designed to target a genetic dysfunction lived longer with fewer side effects than those who received traditional chemotherapy, a study showed Saturday. Researchers found that patients with an abnormal ALK gene who received Pfizer's targeted drug crizotinib remained cancer-free for nearly five months longer. "This study demonstrates the value of testing lung cancer tissue for an ALK rearrangement, and it underscores the potential of cancer genomics to target cancer treatments to each patient," said senior author Pasi Janne of Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts. "ALK now becomes the second abnormal gene that we are able to successfully target in lung cancer with drugs other than chemotherapy." Just five percent of the patients with the most common form of lung cancer have an abnormal ALK gene, but crizotinib could nonetheless help 5,000 patients a year in the United States. The phase III trial of 347 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer found that those who received the drug went a median time of 7.7 months before their disease began to worsen, compared with three months for those who received traditional chemotherapy. The response rate of 65 percent was also more than triple … Continue reading →

Adding a white-blood cell boosting treatment from Sanofi (SAN) to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY)s (BMY) melanoma drug Yervoy helped patients with advanced skin cancer live longer and lessened side effects, a study found. In the trial of 245 patients led by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, 68.9 percent of patients who got Yervoy, designed to spur the immune system to attack cancer cells, and the Sanofi (SAN) drug, GM-CSF, were alive one year later, compared to 52.9 percent of those who got Yervoy alone. The results, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, show that two immune-stimulating drugs may be better than one in treating melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. While the finding needs to be confirmed in a larger study before the combination is routinely practiced, it offers a first, hopeful glimpse into a potential new approach for battling the disease that kills 9,500 people each year. It is very interesting and promising new data, said Jedd Wolchok, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the study. I do think the effect is real. The finding is also the latest in a series … Continue reading →