A recent study suggests that advanced lung cancer patients might be able to avoid another chemotherapy treatment by taking a targeted pill treatment.
An international study showed patients on Iressa, an expensive, newer targeted treatment, survived about as long as those on another course of chemotherapy.
“This will provide us with another drug in our armory,” said Dr. Michael Seckl, head of Cancer Research UK’s Lung Cancer Group at Imperial College in London.
Seckl was not connected to the research, which was published Friday in the Lancet medical journal.
Most lung cancer patients die within a few years of being diagnosed, and few alternatives to chemo exist.
AstraZeneca PLC makes Iressa, a drug that attacks specific growth receptors on cancer cells, doing less harm to patients, but it costs thousands of dollars each month.
AstraZeneca funded a study in which researchers looked at 1,433 advanced lung cancer patients in 24 countries, who had already gone through chemotherapy.
About half of the patients were given Iressa, or gefitinib, once a day. The other half were on docetaxel, a chemotherapy drug given intravenously every three weeks.
Patients on Iressa survived about 7.6 months while those on chemotherapy survived about 8 months. After one year, 32 percent of patients on Iressa were still alive, versus 34 percent of chemotherapy patients.
Two other lung cancer drugs, Tarceva and Avastin, made by Roche Holding AG, are already on the market in the United Kingdom, and Tarceva works similarly to Iressa, which has only been approved in the U.S. so far.
“In the patients that respond, it is very dramatic,” said Seckl, who has seen patients live years on the drug. He did not work with AstraZeneca on Iressa, but has consulted with them on other drugs.
“Though the benefits of prolonging life are modest, patients on (Iressa) get a higher quality of life,” said Chris Twelves, a professor of clinical cancer oncology at Leeds University. “That should swing the pendulum in its favor.”
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