New Cancer Drug Showing Promise

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new cancer drug may be able to treat Ewing’s Sarcoma and other sarcoma tumors without all the negative side effects seen with standard treatment.
And early trials suggest the drug may be effective in shrinking the cancers as well.

Ewing’s Sarcoma affects about 300 people in the United States each year, most of them young people. In 20 percent to 30 percent of the patients, the cancer is only diagnosed after it has spread to other parts of the body. Survival among these patients runs around 25 percent to 30 percent.

New findings based on a phase 1 study conducted in 34 adult patients are giving people new hope. The overall purpose of the study was to find out if the treatment could be safely administered. Researchers found tumors stopped growing in nine of the patients after they began receiving the drug. Common side effects of cancer treatment, such as low blood counts, hair loss, nausea and vomiting, and increased infection risk, were either low or nonexistent in the patients.

The investigators believe the drug works by blocking insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-R1), a chemical pathway cancer cells need to thrive. Since this pathway is also present in other cancers, the drug could potentially have a role to play in more common forms of the disease as well, such as cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate.

“This drug and others like it that attack the IGF pathway may provide a new class of drugs to treat a variety of cancers, including breast, prostate, colon, melanoma, myeloma and a variety of sarcomas, which could greatly add to the way that we currently treat these patients,” study author Stephen Leong, M.D., assistant professor of medical oncology at the University of Colorado Cancer Center was quoted as saying.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

SOURCE: University of Colorado Cancer Center

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