New Promise Against Certain Types Of Lung Cancer

New Promise Against Certain Types Of Lung Cancer.
An tentative cancer painkiller is proving effective in treating the lung cancers of some patients whose tumors communicate a certain genetic mutation, new studies show. Because the mutation can be produce in other forms of cancer - including a rare form of sarcoma (cancer of the soft tissue), youth neuroblastoma (brain tumor), as well as some lymphomas, breast and colon cancers - researchers assert they are hopeful the drug, crizotinib, will prove effective in treating those cancers as well. In one study, researchers identified 82 patients from in the midst 1500 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most base type of lung malignancy, whose tumors had a mutation in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene.

Crizotinib targets the ALK "driver kinase," or protein, blocking its occupation and preventing the tumor from growing, explained retreat co-author Dr Geoffrey Shapiro, director of the Early Drug Development Center and affiliated professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston. "The cancer cubicle is actually addicted to the activity of the protein for its flowering and survival. It's totally dependent on it. The idea is that blocking that protein can put an end to the cancer cell".

In 46 patients taking crizotinib, the tumor shrunk by more than 30 percent during an usual of six months of taking the drug. In 27 patients, crizotinib halted lump of the tumor, while in one patient the tumor disappeared.

The drug also had few side effects. The most common was compassionate gastrointestinal symptoms. "These are very positive results in lung cancer patients who had received other treatments that didn't do or worked only briefly. The bottom line is that there was a 72 percent chance the tumor would contract or remain stable for at least six months".

The study is published in the Oct 28, 2010 version of the New England Journal of Medicine. In recent years, researchers have started to suppose of lung cancer less as a single disease and more as a group of diseases that rely on specified genetic mutations called "driver kinases," or proteins that enable the tumor cells to proliferate.

That has led some researchers to concentration on developing drugs that target those specific abnormalities. "Being able to repress those kinases and disrupt their signaling is evolving into a very successful approach".