Cancer Drugs: Herceptin News and More

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Cervical cancer may also end up with a new standard of care after ASCO. Eli Lilly (LLY) reported that Gemzar, a chemotherapy most commonly used against pancreatic and lung cancers, was able to keep women with deadly cervical cancer alive longer when added to other forms of chemotherapy and radiation. It represents the first time the drug was tested against cervical cancer. The trial was also unusual in that it was almost entirely conducted in developing countries, where cervical cancer is a major killer. Dr. Alfonso Duenas-Gonzalez of the National Cancer Institute of Medicine reported that after three years of followup, 78% of the 259 women who received Gemzar were still alive, compared with 69% of 256 who received standard treatment alone.

Besides already approved drugs, ASCO attendees heard about new targeted treatments that might end up working against any number of cancers as long as they contain the target. A number of companies are developing drugs, for example, that take aim at PARP, an enzyme cancer cells employ to repair the damage inflicted by chemotherapy drugs. Like Herceptin and HER2, anti-PARP drugs will work only in those patients whose tumors have excess amounts of the enzyme, but that could be a number of cancers, including lung and ovarian.

The most advanced anti-PARP drug is BSI-201, developed by BiPar Sciences, which Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) acquired in March. The drug is being tested on women with a rare but deadly form of breast cancer called triple negative, about 15% of all cases. In the trial of 116 women, approximately 62% of patients who received the drug in combination with chemotherapy had their tumors shrink, compared with 21% of those who received chemotherapy only. A similar PARP drug, Olaparib, made by AstraZeneca (AZN), was tested as a single agent in a trial of 54 women with advanced breast cancer, and shrank tumors in one-third of those given the drug.

Cancer specialists cautioned that oncology still has a long way to go before personalized medicine becomes the norm but said the accumulation of small steps like the ones presented at ASCO this year are an encouraging sign that the field is moving in the right direction. "Right now we're using personalized medicines in a nonpersonalized way," says Dr. Roy Herbst, a lung cancer specialist at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "But we are getting there."

Arnst is a senior writer for BusinessWeek based in New York.

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