Newer drugs are substantially improving and enhancing the chances of survival for some individuals with hard-to-treat forms of lung, breast, and prostate cancer, doctors, reported at the world’s largest cancer conference.

Immunotherapy drugs such as Keytruda have transformed the various treating types of cancerous tumors, but they’re still relatively new and don’t help most patients. The most extensive study yet of Keytruda in patients with advanced lung cancer discovered that 23 percent of those who got the drug as an element of their initial therapy survived at least five years, whereas 16 percent of those who tried other treatments first did. The risk of this rises with age, but about 48,000 cases each in the U.S. are in women under age 50 years. About 70 percent are “hormone-positive, HER2-negative” — that is, cancer’s growth is fueled by estrogen or progesterone and not by the gene that the drug Herceptin targets.

In research of 672 women with such cancers that had spread or been very advanced, adding the Novartis drug Kisqali to the usual hormone blockers as initial therapy helped more than hormone treatment alone.

After 3½ years, 70 percent of females on Kisqali were alive, compared to 46 percent for the remainder. Side effects were more typical with Kisqali.

This is the very first time any treatment has boosted survival beyond what hormone blockers do for such patients.

The choices keep expanding for men with prostate cancer that has spread beyond the gland. Standard therapy is drugs that block the male hormone testosterone, which helps these cancers grow, plus chemotherapy or even a newer drug called Zytiga.

Now, two other drugs have proved to extend survival whenever used like chemo or Zytiga in guys who were getting natural hormone therapy and still being helped by it.

One study tested Xtandi, sold by Pfizer and Astellas Pharma Inc., in 1,125 guys, half of whom also were chemo that is getting. After three years, 80 % of those offered Xtandi plus standard treatments were alive, contrasted to 72 percent of men given the other treatments alone. The other research involved 1,052 guys who got hormone treatment with or minus the Janssen drug Erleada. After two years, success was 82 percent among those on Erleada and 74 percent those types of who wasn’t.

Men now have a range of four drugs that provide comparable benefits, with no studies yet have compared them against one another, said Dr. Ethan Basch, a prostate specialist at the University of North Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center who may have no financial ties to any drugmakers.

However, chemo can cause numbness and tingling in the tactile arms and feet and may even maybe not be suitable for men with diabetes who already are at higher risk because of this problem. Zytiga must be studied having a steroid; Xtandi and Erleada can cause fainting and falling.

Chemo has more side effects, but it costs much less and requires only four to six intravenous treatments. One other three medications are pills that cost more than $10,000 a month and tend to be taken indefinitely.

Reference
Drugs make headway against lung, breast, prostate cancers …. https://www.everyday-scoop.com/drugs-make-headway-against-lung-breast-prostate-cancers-the-associated-press/