A new drug has been heralded as “the biggest breakthrough in a decade” in the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer.
Seven women who were participating in a drug trial at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital were told their tumours had shrunk dramatically after taking new drug ONX-801.
15 women participated in the trial and researchers called the results “highly unusual” and “very promising”.
The trials were being held to test the safety of the drug but researchers are so impressed by its performance that they want to move to the next step of research, according to The Mirror.
The drug works by mimicking folic acid for which ovarian cancer cells have an abnormally large amount of receptors. It may help some ovarian cancer sufferers whose illness has stopped responding to other treatments.
Unlike chemotherapy, it specifically targets cancer cells and patients do not suffer side-effects typically associated with chemotherapy such as infections, diarrhoea, nerve damage and hair loss.
The drug was developed by the UK’s Institute for Cancer Research and so far, has only been tested on those with advanced ovarian cancer. However, there are hopes it may benefit sufferers in the early stages of the disease who have a higher survival rate.
Dr Udai Banerji who lead the study said: “The results we have seen in this trial are very promising. It is rare to see such clear evidence of reproducible responses in these early stages of drug development.”
“This is a completely new mechanism and should add upward of six months to patients’ lives with minimal side-effects in extremely late-phase ovarian cancer. This is much more than anything achieved in the last 10 years.”
He added that it may be possible to use the drug in the early stages of the disease where “the impact on survival may be better”. However, he said it was important to carry out trials first, according to The Guardian.
Another medical expert cautiously welcomed the news but warned that the shrinkage of tumours could not be equated with survival.
“Shrinkage of tumours is important, but as the authors point out, that is not the same as producing the hoped-for extension of survival for women with ovarian cancer,” said Professor Michel Coleman, professor of epidemiology and vital statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women and over 7,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with the deadly disease every year.
