Prostate pill that can ‘halt tumours in their tracks’

THOUSANDS of men with advanced prostate cancer could soon benefit from the first genetargeted drug for the disease.

Drugs bosses yesterday announced they have proved that olaparib – a daily pill which uses a man’s genetic make-up to undermine a tumour’s defences – freezes aggressive prostate cancer in its tracks.

British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and its US partner MSD announced that a major phase three trial, carried out on 387 men around the world, had demonstrated the drug stops the spread of invasive prostate cancer for longer than existing drugs.

Full details of the trial results will not be revealed until later this year, but the fact that it successfully met its ‘end point’ – a key marker of success – paves the way for the firms to apply for a medical licence.

If it is approved, it will be the first personalised, or ‘precision’, medicine to be made available for prostate cancer.

These enable doctors to accurately target cancer according to the patient’s genetic makeup, rather than the ‘one- sizefits-all’ approach provided by chemotherapy and hormone therapy.

Experts believe the treatment – already available for ovarian cancer – could benefit up to 4,000 British men every year, delaying the moment when the disease becomes deadly. Future results are expected to show that it will also extend lives.

Olaparib, developed in London, Cambridge and Sheffield over 20 years, is the first in a wave of drugs called PARP-inhibitors, which exploit a weakness in cancer cells’ defences to kill a tumour without harming healthy tissue.

It is particularly powerful in men who carry a mutated BRCA gene – carried by Angelina Jolie, increasing the star’s risk of ovarian and breast cancer. But the drug also works for men with other DNA mutations.

Overall, about a third of men with aggressive prostate cancer are thought to respond to the treatment. The Daily Mail is campaigning for an urgent improvement in prostate cancer treatments and diagnosis.

Despite rapid advances in tackling other cancer types, the number of men who die from prostate cancer is still going up, with 11,800 men in Britain lost each year to the disease.

Personalised medicine breakthroughs have shaken the world of treating breast cancer and ovarian cancer in recent years.

But this would be the first treatment to bring this cancer revolution to men with prostate cancer. Study leader Professor Johann de Bono of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said: ‘These results showed that olaparib… improved the outcome for men with the most deadly form of the disease.

‘We’re now eagerly awaiting the final analysis of the trial. If the results look as good as these initial data suggest, men with advanced prostate cancer who have BRCA mutations should be able to benefit from olaparib in the next couple of years.’

An earlier ‘phase two’ study, carried out on 100 men, suggested that olaparib could delay progression of prostate cancer for an average of 8.3 months.

Experts believe the drug, which costs roughly £3,500 a month, could be approved for NHS use within two years.