Women with untreatable ovarian cancer have seen their tumours shrink substantially in an early trial of a UK-led drug hailed as the biggest breakthrough against the disease in a decade.
Only one in three women with the cancer will survive for more than ten years and it causes 4,000 deaths a year in Britain. Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research have developed a compound, ONX-0801, that sneaks into the tumour by disguising itself as folic acid.
The intravenous drug, which has shown none of the side-effects of chemotherapy, significantly reversed the growth of tumours in seven out of 15 women whose cancers had become resistant to conventional medicine. Several were treated at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
About two thirds of patients respond to the standard chemical drugs but many relapse after 18 months or so. The usual platinum-based medication will eventually become ineffective in a large minority of these women.
“This is much more than anything that has been achieved in the last ten years,” said Dr Udai Banerji, who is leading the trial. “However, [larger] trials need to be done. When eventually used early in the disease, the impact on survival may be better, but we don’t know that yet.”
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The results of the trial will be presented today at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.