Ovarian cancer drug prevents ‘unprecedented’ 70pc of relapses

A NEW ovarian cancer treatment dramatically reduces the chances of the disease returning, a study has shown.

Doctors have welcomed the results of a “breakthrough” trial, which they say opens the possibility that many more women suffering with the hard-to-treat disease will now be cured.

Ovarian cancer has one of the worst survival rates, with just 35 per cent of women living 10 years or more after their diagnosis. Even including the majority of patients who show no evidence of disease after initial treatment, which involves surgery and chemotherapy, around 70 per cent go on to relapse within three years.

But in the new study, published in the The New England Journal of Medicine, two thirds of patients who are given a drug called olaparib had not relapsed in the first three years after treatment.

Overall, half of those given the medication have so far showed no signs of the disease returning, despite the international study starting in 2013.

Prof Charlie Gourley, director of ovarian cancer research at the University of Edinburgh, which ran the British arm of the trial, said: “The most exciting finding is that more than half the patients on the olaparib arm have not relapsed within a minimum of three years of follow-up. This is unprecedented and raises the possibility that a number of these patients may be cured, although longer follow-up of patients is required before we can definitively draw this conclusion.”

Ovarian cancer, which affects 7,270 new women in Britain each year, is typically incurable once it returns. Patients go on to receive various types of treatment, but, over time, the gaps between their relapses become shorter.

Olaparib is already used to treat women whose advanced ovarian cancer has returned, meaning the process by which it could be approved for firsttime sufferers could be relatively quick.

In the new trial, 260 women with the BRCA gene mutation were given olaparib and 130 with the same mutation were given a placebo. Both groups had surgery and chemotherapy after their cancer was detected. Of the women who received the dummy pill, only one third had not relapsed after three years.

Overall, the treatment was associated with a 70 per cent reduction in risk of disease progression or death. However, the benefits may turn out to be even better than this as so many of the participants have not yet relapsed.

The study was part-funded by Astrazeneca and Merck, which produce olaparib.