Drug to fight breast cancer looks promising

A drug used to treat advanced breast cancer has had what appears to be unprecedented success in prolonging lives in a clinical trial, researchers reported yesterday.

Patients who received the drug — Perjeta, from the Swiss drugmaker Roche — had a median survival time nearly 16 months longer than those in the control group.

That is the longest time for a drug used as an initial treatment for metastatic breast cancer, the researchers said, and it may be one of the longest for the treatment of any cancer. Most cancer drugs prolong survival in patients with metastatic disease for a few months at most. Metastasis means the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

“It’s really unprecedented to have this survival benefit,” said Dr. Sandra M. Swain of the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, the lead author of the study.

The results were presented yesterday in Madrid at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology. Swain has been a paid speaker for the company.

Two experts not involved in the study, Dr. Edith A. Perez of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and Dr. Harold J. Burstein of the Dana-Farber Cancer

Patients who received the drug — Perjeta, from the Swiss drugmaker Roche — had a median survival time nearly 16 months longer than those in the control group.

Institute in Boston, said the results were impressive.

“Usually we see two months of improvement,” Perez said.

Perjeta, like the better-known Roche drug Herceptin, blocks the action of a protein called HER2, which spurs the growth of some breast tumors. Perjeta is meant to be used with Herceptin for the roughly 20 percent of breast cancers characterized by an abundance of HER2.

In the U.S., Perjeta costs about $5,900 a month and Herceptin about $5,300 a month, said Edward Lang Jr., a spokesman for Roche.