Trials of expensive cancer drugs extending lives

CANCER DRUGS that are being trialled in Ireland are offering hope to sufferers of two of the most deadly manifestations of the disease, a recent conference was told.

The European Society for Medical Oncology annual conference in Vienna heard that drugs for lung cancer and malignant melanoma have substantially increased the life expectancy of patients who would otherwise have died.

The majority of patients who take Crizotinib, a drug being trialled in St James’s Hospital, were still alive after 20 months. The normal life expectancy for people with stage III and IV lung cancer is nine months.

The drug is effective in only about 5 per cent of lung cancer patients – those who test positive for the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene – but the early results are a significant breakthrough in the management of the disease which is very difficult to treat.

It is hoped that other sub-sets of lung cancer patients will be able to benefit from similarly targeted drugs.

There was also good news for malignant melanoma sufferers. The drug Ipilimumab, which was the subject of a public campaign to have it administered to final stage malignant melanoma patients in Ireland, has almost doubled the number of patients alive after four years. Some 19 per cent were still alive compared with 10 per cent of patients on conventional chemotherapy.

The conference was also told that Dabrafenib, which is also being tested on Irish patients, combined with another drug, trametinib, is also showing dramatic improvements in survival rates among malignant melanoma sufferers.

Dabrafenib was given to Irish patients on an experimental basis and the two drugs combined will be given in a trial to Irish patients starting this week.

There was also breakthroughs reported in the administration of the drug Regorafenib in colon cancer and and pazopanib in renal cancer.

All have participated in trials organised by the All Ireland co-operative oncology research group, which has been to the forefront in securing clinical trials for potentially life-saving cancer drugs.

The group’s chief executive, Brian Moulton, said Irish researchers were involved in all the “good news” coming out of Vienna and he urged Irish cancer patients to become involved in clinical trials.

Mr Moulton said the State’s perilous financial position meant “many of the medications that we are bringing in for trials won’t be available generally and some may never be available except through private medicine”.