New targeted lung cancer drug produces 'dramatic' symptom improvement
Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 10:50
in Health & Medicine
A clinical trial of a potential new targeted treatment drug has provided powerful evidence that it can halt or reverse the growth of lung tumours characterised by a specific genetic abnormality. In their report in the October 28 New England Journal of Medicine, a multi-institutional research team reports that daily doses of the investigational drug crizotinib shrank the tumours of more than half of a group patients whose tumours were driven by alterations in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene. In another one-third of study participants, crizotinib treatment suppressed tumour growth. Preliminary results of this study were reported at the June 2010 meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology...