New hope for kidney cancer
The drug could target kidney cancer
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Universal Music, out October 30th, 2007. |  |
Tuesday, 30, Oct 2007 07:52
A new drug heralds hope for people with a type of kidney cancer that has a poor response to current drug treatment, researchers claim.
The treatment, axitinib, showed promising results in patients with the cancer, known as cytokine-refractory, metastatic kidney cancer.
Researchers from the University of Paris conducted a phase two trial of axitinib in 52 people with this type of cancer.
Publishing the findings in the Lancet journal today, they say that 23 had complete or partial success, 12 of which had a positive response lasting from four to 26 months.
Twenty-two showed stable disease longer than two months, including 13 patients with stable disease for 24 weeks or longer, while the cancer progressed in four people.
Although 30 patients had hypertension related to the treatment, side-effects were said to be manageable and controlled by dose modification.
Professor Olivier Rixe said: "The objective response and time to progression in our study suggest that axitinib might be a promising drug in the treatment of patients with metastatic renal-cell cancer; although a randomised controlled trial is needed to confirm this finding."
Commenting on the findings, Dr W Marston Linehan from the US National Cancer Institute said the drug holds "promise as a second line treatment" with the type of kidney cancer studied.
Each year more than 7,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer in the UK, causing about 3,600 deaths.