Women with highly aggressive breast cancer have been thrown a lifeline thanks to a ‘breakthrough’ drug that promises to give some of them extra months.
The life-changing treatment, taken as an injection every three weeks, offers a last chance for women with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) who have exhausted other options.
About 7,500 Britons are diagnosed with this type of cancer every year. Those affected tend to be younger than women diagnosed with other forms of breast cancer, with many under 40.
The life-changing treatment, taken as an injection every three weeks, offers a last chance for women with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) who have exhausted other options
In 2012, Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone revealed that her mother Krista had successfully battled TNBC. Patients often respond poorly to commonly used treatments so the diagnosis can be a death sentence.
As few as one in eight patients with advanced TNBC – where tumours have spread to other organs – respond to chemotherapy.
Even among that group, it stalls tumour growth by only two to three months on average, with many suffering side effects.
In 2012, Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone revealed that her mother Krista had successfully battled TNBC
But results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas on Friday show that a drug can help to prolong the lives of more women with advanced TNBC. Tumours shrank in 75 of 110 of those given the drug, sacituzumab govitecan, which attacks a protein made by cancer cells called TROP-2.
Over time, tumours usually grow resistant to a drug, and that appears to be the case in most patients here.
But the drug doubled the average time tumour growth was stalled, to five-and-a-half months. More than half of patients lived over a year – an improvement on current survival times – and in three cases, all signs of tumours were eradicated.
Results are so exciting that the US drugs regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, has given it ‘breakthrough’ status, meaning it is being fast-tracked for approval.
British women may be able to get the drug on a trial basis next year, or in 2019 as part of a bigger study.