New Treatment For Breast Cancer Shows Promise

An experimental breast cancer drug has shown some promising results in initial trials, stopping tumor growths and even shrinking them in an encouraging number of patients, according to preliminary results.

The results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in the city of San Diego, California.

The drug in question combines palbociclib and letrozole -- components for cancer treatment -- in one conveninet pill called bemaciclib. Letrozole alone is already commonly used to help treat post-operation women with breast cancer to help prevent relapse.

Lead researcher Dr. Amita Patnaik and he colleagues presented the results of bemaciclib's phase two trial to a crowd of experts and cancer researchers associated with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

According to Patnaik, the drug proved extremely effective in treating the most common type of breast cancer, called hormone receptor-positive breast cancer -- a type of breast cancer that occurs when cancer cells form tumor tissue in accordance with abnormal signaling from estrogen and progesterone.

In a phase two trial that included 165 women with advancing stages of breast cancer, bemaciclib treatment resulted in a halt of cancer growth in approximately half of them. The cancer in one in four of the trial participants even showed signs of reversing, exhibiting a shrinkage of their pre-existing tumors by more than 30 percent on average.

According to co-researcher Richard S. Finn. The encouraging results of this small-sample trial will lead to testing on a larger scale.

"The point of a randomized, phase II study is to have evidence that gives us confidence to do a phase III study, and we think that this study proved the hypothesis that a combination of palbociclib and letrozole is better than letrozole alone," Finn explained in an AACR press release.

Bemacicib was produced in collaboration with the drug company Pfizer.

An AACR press release detailing the presentation was published on April 6.