New Pfizer Drug Helps Intestinal Cancer Patients - Study
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11-03-05 05:58 AM EST
Edited Press Release
PARIS -(Dow Jones)- Pfizer Inc (PFE)'s investigational medicine sunitinib malate, or Sutent, a multi-targeted anti-cancer therapy shows significant clinical benefit in a variety of tumour types according to new data presented at ECCO 13 - The European Cancer Conference in Paris, France.
Specifically, clinical investigators presented the latest data on use of sunitinib malate to treat metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), breast cancer and neuroendocrine tumors.
Dr George Demetri, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA and lead investigator on the sunitinib malate clinical trial for GIST, said: "We know that these cancers all express high levels of receptor tyrosine kinases, such as receptors for VEGFs and PDGFs, which are responsible for angiogenesis and tumor cell growth."
"Sunitinib malate targets these and other key receptor tyrosine kinases and appears to not only starve the tumor and halt its growth but also inhibits further proliferation and causes tumor cells to die, thereby actually shrinking the tumor," Demetri said.
In two metastatic renal cell carcinoma, independent single arm, multi-centre, phase II trials, sunitinib malate achieved an overall response (complete response + partial response) in 42 percent of patients and progression free survival was 8.2 months. This is compared to current standard therapies, interferon-alpha and interleukin-2, which achieved an overall response in 2 and 5 percent of patients respectively.The overall survival in trial 014 (63 patients) was 16.4 months. Trial 1006 ( 106 patients) is still ongoing and therefore the overall survival is yet to be reached.
"These trial results confirm that there is a new therapy option for mRCC patients who have failed on cytokine therapy, the current first-line treatment available," said Dr Gary Hudes, Director of Genitourinary Malignancies at Fox Chase Cancer Centre, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a lead sunitinib malate trial investigator.
"These findings have encouraged us to start a large-scale phase III program to determine the potential benefits of sunitinib malate as a first-line therapy for mRCC,"he added.
Results of the gastrointestinal stromal tumors phase III double-blind trial of more than 300 patients, resistant or intolerant to imatinib, show that sunitinib malate significantly increased patients' time to progression to 27.3 weeks compared to 6.4 weeks for placebo.
The trial is still ongoing, therefore the overall survival has yet to be reached. The trial was conducted in 56 sites in Europe, USA, Australia and Asia, randomised the patients to either sunitinib malate (N=207) or placebo (N=105).
Information about this program is available at +1 877 416 6248 or
www.pfizeroncology.com.(END) Dow Jones Newswires
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