French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis and Japan's Taiho Pharmaceutical said combining their S-1 oral stomach cancer medicine with the drug cisplatin improved chances of survival compared with S-1 alone.
Risk of death was reduced by 22.6 percent in advanced gastric cancer patients who received the combination treatment over S-1 alone in a Phase III Japanese study, the companies said. The findings were released Sunday at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.
The study, called Spirit, involved 305 patients who received either oral S-1 twice daily for 28 days, followed by a 14-day rest period, or oral S-1 twice daily for 21 days plus cisplatin on the eighth day of treatment, followed by the 14-day rest period.
The median overall survival rate at two years was 13 months for patients who received the combination treatment, compared with 11 months for those who received S-1 alone.
The overall response rate was also better, with 54 percent who got the combination responding to treatment, compared with 31.1 percent in the S-1 only arm.
"This study demonstrates that the combination of S-1 and cisplatin brings to the patient with advance gastric cancer an acceptable benefit/risk ratio," said study investigator Dr. Hiroyuki Narahara.
Stomach cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the world, with more than 700,000 deaths a year.
S-1 is already prescribed in Japan to treat stomach, colorectal, head and neck, non-small cell lung, metastatic breast and pancreas cancers. It is in the final stages of health trials in the United States and Europe.
Taiho sells S-1 in Japan and several other Asian countries, while Sanofi is developing the drug in Europe and the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment