martes, 7 de octubre de 2014

Perjeta Drug


Breast cancer drug delivers 'unprecedented' results


http://www.bbc.com/capital/specials/protection-now/research-technology/breast-cancer-drug-delivers-unprecedented-results_a-36-275.html

New treatment significantly extends lives during trial


A new breast cancer drug has demonstrated 'unprecedented' benefits in extending lives in a clinical trial.

Experts are now calling for it to be made widely available for women with aggressive strains of the disease.

Patients with a type of breast cancer called HER2 positive who were given Perjeta on top of established drug Herceptin and chemotherapy lived an average of 15.7 months longer than those on Herceptin and chemotherapy alone.

This is the longest extension to survival ever seen for a drug used to treat metastatic breast cancer.

"The results, I think, are phenomenal," said lead researcher Sandra Swain, of the Washington Hospital Center.

"The survival improvement of nearly 16 months is unprecedented among studies of metastatic breast cancer."

Perjeta and Herceptin are antibodies designed to block HER2, a protein produced by a cancer-linked gene. Perjeta attaches itself to a different part of the same protein, making combining the two drugs particularly effective.

Perjeta, developed by Swiss drugmaker Roche, was approved by regulators two years ago and recently tested in a study involving more than 800 women.

Researchers had previously reported that Perjeta extended progression-free survival - the period of time patients live without their disease worsening - but the overall survival data has taken longer to collate.

The results, announced earlier this week at the European Society for Medical Oncologyannual congress in Madrid, are a vindication of combining cancer drugs that fight the disease in different ways.

Image source: Army Medicine, Flickr