Drug designed for lung cancer shrinks breast tumours
A drug that was originally designed for the treatment of lung cancer may be beneficial for patients with breast cancer, say researchers.
The European marketing application for gefitinib (Iressa) was withdrawn
earlier this year after the drug failed to demonstrate increased survival
in the overall population of lung cancer sufferers. However, the drug
has now been shown to reduce the size of breast tumours when used alone
or in combination with anastrazole (Arimidex) before surgery.
In a double-blind trial researchers randomised 56 postmenopausal women
with early breast cancer to gefitinib 250mg daily plus anastrazole 1mg
daily or to gefitinib 250mg daily plus placebo, for four to six weeks
before surgery.
The breast cancers were all oestrogen-receptor positive and epidermal
growth factor-receptor positive.
Tumour cell proliferation was reduced in both groups. Tumour size was
reduced by 30–99 per cent in 14 out of the 28 patients taking gefitinib
plus anastrazole and in 12 out of the 22 patients assigned gefitinib
alone.
The researchers say that neoadjuvant hormonal therapy helps avoid the
toxic effects of cytotoxic treatment and that reducing the size of large
primary breast cancers may enable patients to undergo more conservative
surgery. “Gefitinib, combined with an aromatase inhibitor, might
have a role in the neoadjuvant treatment of breast cancer by reducing
the size of the tumour more rapidly,” they add.
They add that the treatment was well tolerated and that large scale studies
of the use of gefitinib before breast cancer surgery are now being designed.
The study was published early online in The Lancet Oncology. |
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