Hope for patients with metastatic breast cancer: A new study presented at the World Cancer Conference in San Antonio in the United States (SABCS) found that women with advanced and metastatic breast cancer treated with the drug “Anharto” were able to survive more than 20 months from receiving treatment. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the treatment in a flash procedure in light of the drug’s high efficiency and it may even be included in the health basket in Israel this year.
For more updates and to send your stories – visit the news Facebook page
The new drug, developed by Astra-Zanka, is intended for patients with metastatic type 2 HER cancer, who have exhausted all existing treatments and the only option left for them is chemotherapy with high toxicity, severe side effects and low response rates. According to the interim results, 74% of the patients who took “Anharto” survived more than 18 months from the time of receiving the treatment and it is estimated that the patients’ life span will be significantly longer in the last stage of the study.
The study involved 253 patients with metastatic breast cancer in medical centers in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Spain and France. The patients received the drug after all the treatments they received failed and their disease progressed. According to the findings published at the conference, 61.4% of the women responded to the treatment – a particularly high rate among cancer treatments and in particular compared to chemotherapy. The average response time to treatment was almost 21 months and the disease did not progress by an average of 19.5 months. This period is also particularly long compared to other treatments.
“The results of the study show that there is still good treatment for patients with metastatic breast cancer,” said Dr. Shano Moody, a breast cancer oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York and the lead researcher. “This drug allows for clinically effective treatment and it This is important, because there are almost no treatments for cancer that have succeeded in prolonging the lives of patients at this stage of the disease. “
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. When the disease is detected early, the cure rates are high, but in metastatic breast cancer the situation becomes more complex and the cure rates are significantly lower. Over a thousand women in Israel die each year from the disease and only 27% of women with metastatic breast cancer survive more than five years. One in four women diagnosed with breast cancer suffers from a tumor in which HER 2 is overexpressed.
There are currently effective treatments for this type of cancer, but at some point the patient develops resistance to the drug, the disease progresses and needs different treatment. After the failure of two treatments, there is no effective therapeutic response for the patients and most receive chemotherapy that helps stop the disease for only 6 months on average.