New drugs advance against cancers

Doctors are reporting success with newer drugs that control certain types of cancer better, reduce the risk it will come back and make treatment simpler and easier to bear.

Gentler drugs would be a relief to patients such as Jenn Carroll, 57, of New Hartford, Conn., who had traditional IV chemotherapy after lung cancer surgery in 2018. She jumped at the chance to help test a newer drug taken as a daily pill, AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso. Rather than chemo’s imprecise cell-killing approach, Tagrisso targets a specific gene mutation. Its side effects are manageable and it can be used for several years to help prevent recurrence, doctors said.

A big drawback: It and other newer drugs are extremely expensive — $150,000 or more a year.

Here are highlights of that study and others from an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference this weekend:

• Dr. Roy Herbst of the Yale Cancer Center led a study of Tagrisso in 682 patients with lung cancer. All had operable tumors. About half had standard chemo after surgery then took Tagrisso or a placebo.

After two years on average, 89% of patients on the drug were alive without a cancer recurrence vs. 53% on placebo.

• Researchers tested Myovant Sciences’s relugolix — a hormone blocker and the first that’s a daily pill — vs. leuprolide shots every three months in 930 men treated for nearly a year for prostate cancer. About 97% on the experimental drug kept hormones suppressed throughout that time versus 89% on leuprolide.