New Drug for Prostate Cancer
Germany’s Bayer and Norwegian biotech Algeta have released an experimental drug that may prolong the lives of patients suffering from advanced prostate cancer. Cancer experts are calling it “a major step forward” in the treatment of the disease. Preliminary studies have shown it to be highly successful.
A late stage trial of Alpharadin, a new type of drug that delivers small but highly-charged doses of radiation to tumors in the bone, was halted early after researchers noticed patients on the new treatments living almost three months longer on average than those on the standard treatments and placebos.
“It would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment to those taking placebo,” said Chris Parker, who led the trial at Britain’s Royal Marsden Hospital. He presented the research to delegates at the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC) in Stockholm, Sweden.
Alpharadin is based on the active ingredient radium 223 and was designed to treat patients suffering from advanced cancers that have spread to their bones.
According to parker, the drug will become a new standard treatment for those patients. Both Jean Charles Soria, a co-chair of the EMCC congress, and Michael Baumann, president of the European Cancer Organization, agreed, saying that Alpharadin was a “major new player” and likely to be “practice changing”.
Sales of Alpharadin are expected to surge to $662 million by the year 2015, according to consensus forecasts from Thomsom Reuters Pharma.
Alpharadin is part of a class of drugs called alpha-pharmaceuticals which work by sending tiny, targeted doses of damaging radiation to a secondary tumor, known as a metastasis in the bone. Side effects are generally minimal since it is so targeted. Compared with chemotherapy which affects all the tissues in the body, this treatment is much more targeted and safe.
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