More hope for cancer-afflicted patients on anvil

By Vikas Dandekar , CNBC-TV18

 

There are no cures for cancer but cancer drugs are indeed getting more and more sophisticated. Cancer is far from being conquered but when over 30,000 delegates from across the world converged at the annual conference of American Society of Clinical Oncology at Chicago, some breakthrough achievements were discussed in the treatment of at least one type of Cancer i.e Colorectal cancer.

 

Scientists have found a gene type called K-Ras that may now render Colorectal cancer drugs ineffective in a large number of patients i.e. if the K-Ras gene is found to be mutated in cancer patients.

 

Essentially, that means that these set of patients will not show tumour shrinkages even if the drug is adminstered on them. So, what is being called as the first step forward in personalised medicine, doctors can now spare those patients from the agony and expense of cancer or chemotherapy drugs.

 

In fact, some major steps have also been taken by smaller companies like Abraxis Bioscience which has successfully launched the next generation breast cancer drug - Abraxane.

 

Dr Neil Desai of Abraxis who has been the backbone for development of Abraxane explains how his company has developed the Nanoparticle Albumin Bound or NAB technology for carrying anti-cancer drug Paclitaxel into the tumour, control its growth and then ultimately kill it.

 

Neil Desai of Abraxis said there were two motives here: one is alleviate those toxicities and second get it to act where the tumour is. So, we looked around and tried to hypothesise what kind of approach we could take and decided to go the natural way, or look at naturally occurring biopolymers, proteins and albumin is a key component.

 

The NAB technology is being tested in some other cancers like lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. In other cases, where credible breakthrough has lacked, experts are using a combination of anti-cancer drugs to increase their efficacy. Novartis ' Zometa and Glaxo s' Tykerb is being tried with other drugs that has showed almost 36% more survival in chronic breast cancer patients.

 

Gnant, Clinical Investigator said, "This is just very exciting. It is an 1,800 patient trial of pre-menopausal patients suffering from endocrynal responsive early stage breast cancer. This means that these patients remain healthy. As a physician and a person, this is great for me."

 

With more and more larger companies expanding their research in cancer drugs, those with a formidable pipeline will be the distinctive winners as compared to those who may have sidelined cancer research.