Prostate cancer drug prolongs life, eases pain
While undeniably necessary for scientific validity, sometimes patients who volunteer for clinical trials miss out on potentially life-saving treatments if they’re assigned to a control or placebo group.
But during the recent trial of a drug used to treat advanced prostate cancer, researchers found the medication to be so effective that they stopped testing early, allowing all subjects a chance to receive the life-extending medication.
Researchers at the University of San Francisco California were testing Johnson & Johnson’s hormone treatment, Zytiga. The drug is currently only approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a last-ditch treatment for patients whose cancer has spread to other parts of the body and who have already undergone chemotherapy.
When scientists gave the drug to those with advanced stages of the disease but who had not yet undergone chemo, they found that Zytiga was effective for that group as well. When given alongside a steroid, the drug slowed tumor growth, alleviated pain, and prolonged life.
While the FDA will need to reconsider the drug before it can be marketed more broadly, its approval could lead to wider insurance coverage.
"If the FDA looks favorably upon the data ... it will really change the standard of care in advanced prostate cancer away from chemotherapy toward a well-tolerated, oral therapy," lead researcher, Dr. Charles Ryan said at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting on Saturday. "It opens up the possibility of this life-prolonging therapy being given to a larger population of patients."
Bruce Roth, a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, said he has at least 100 patients who are putting off chemotherapy who could benefit from Zytiga. He said many patients delay chemotherapy as long as possible, even as their disease progresses, because of the side effects, which can include fatigue and neutropenia, a condition that increases the risk of infections.
“The pool of patients is very large,” Roth said. “There are patients who are waiting for something, but not willing to take on the toxicity of chemotherapy and decrease their quality of life.”
The team hopes to publish the final results of the trial next year. Favorable results could also mean more competition for Dendreon’s Provenge, another drug used for late-stage prostate cancer before chemotherapy.
[via SFGate, Businessweek]
Image: Zytiga
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com