cheap travel packages: New drugs boost skin cancer survival: Studies

Sunday, June 5, 2011

New drugs boost skin cancer survival: Studies - LHRTimes.com

By Nasir Nadeem

Published: June 5, 2011

A doctors? report has revealed that a couple of drugs have yielded remarkable gains in survival in separate studies of people with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. The study showed so much improvement in people with advanced disease through an experimental use of drug that those getting a comparison drug were suggested to switch after just a few months.

A gene mutation found in about half of all melanomas was specifically targeted by vemurafenib, a special kind of experimental drug being developed by Genentech, part of Swiss-based Roche, and Plexxikon Inc., part of the Daiichi Sankyo Group of Japan. A newly approved medicine for diagnosed melanoma patients in early stages is Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.?s Yervoy which was tested in another study, and found it nearly doubled the number who survived at least three years.

Chief executive of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Dr. Allen Lichter has said that melanoma has just seen a renaissance of new agents.

The oncology group?s annual meeting in Chicago where the new studies were presented on Sunday.

As per new figures presented by the American Cancer Society, the disease is on the rise and almost 68,000 new cases have been reported and 8,700 patients were died from melanoma in the United States in 2010.

Dr. Paul Chapman of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York headed the new study that was the key test of its safety and effectiveness.

Almost 675 patients across the world with inoperable, advanced melanoma and the gene mutation were treated under the study point of view. They were given a dose of vemurafenib pills twice a day or infusions every three weeks of the chemotherapy drug dacarbazine. After a treatment of six months, 84 percent of patients using vemurafenib were alive versus 64 percent of the others.