A new lung cancer drug could extend lives of patients by 14 percent based on the results of a large clinical study.
Ramucirumab is a drug with brand name Cyramza manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company, was previously approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment for patients suffering from gastric cancer. But the American drugmaker would like to extend its use to patients with advanced lung cancer who had a relapse after the initial treatment, or chemotherapy.
Researchers from the Cancer Research Center of Lyon in France led by Dr. Maurice Perol recruited 1,253 patients diagnosed with the most common type of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer, and underwent chemotherapy yet experienced relapse.
Some of the patients were given chemotherapy drug docetaxel with ramucirumab while others were given placebo.
The test revealed that ramucirumab could boost the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug after noting that it took 4.5 months up to 10.5 months before the patients experienced relapse compared to 3 to 9.1 months of the placebo group. Tumors shrinkage was observed in 23 percent of the ramucirumab group compared to 14 percent of those under placebo.
"This is the first treatment in approximately a decade to improve the outcome of patients in the second-line setting," Perol said in the conference, as quoted by Healthday News. "The survival improvement is significant because patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer typically have a very short survival time following second-line therapy."
While the drug could prolong the patients' lives by an estimated 14 percent, Dr. Perol admitted that there were some side effects.
"There was no increase in adverse events or in pulmonary hemorrhage [bleeding from the lung], which is one of the greatest potential risks," Perol said.
The new drug seemed to be promising as it did not increase the rate of lung bleeding.
"Ramucirumab is an effective targeted agent when added to chemotherapy, with low toxicity," Dr. Gregory Masters, a lung cancer specialist, commented on the study, quoted by Reuters.
The researchers presented the results of the study Saturday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. The results were not published yet in any peer-reviewed journal.
