New targeted lung cancer drug produces 'dramatic' symptom improvement
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 16:50
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 tumors characterized 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 tumors of more than half of a group patients whose tumors were driven by alterations in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene. In another one-third of study participants, crizotinib treatment suppressed tumor growth. Preliminary results of this study were reported at the June 2010 meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology.