Print“We are hopeful that PLX4032 will provide similar benefit to these patients so urgently in need of effective therapies, says K. Peter Hirth, Plexxikon's CEO.”
Plexxikon said its experimental drug, the subject of a collaboration with Roche, was able to shrink melanoma tumors in 81 percent of patients in an early-stage trial. The positive results were short-lived. Tumors grew again in all but two of the trial patients following the treatment. But researchers have hailed the result as a breakthrough in treating the notoriously tough-to-treat cancer.
“Metastatic melanoma is a very challenging disease to treat and there have been no significant therapeutic advances in the past 20 years,” says Paul Chapman, senior author of the study and an attending physician on the Melanoma and Sarcoma Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.
“What has changed is that we learned that half of melanomas are addicted to a mutated gene called BRAF; this new targeted drug inhibits BRAF and shuts off these tumors,” says Chapman.
The BRAF mutation occurs in 40 percent to 60 percent of people with melanoma.
Plexxikon's medicine also showed promise in shrinking melanomas at all sites of disease in the patients tested, including challenging visceral lesions in the bone, liver and small bowel.
Since 2006, Plexxikon has been co-developing the medicine, PLX4032, under a license and collaboration agreement with Roche, which plans to make a DNA-based diagnostic test that will identify patients whose tumors carry a genetic modification making them receptive to the drug.
The Berkeley, California-based company has jumpstarted parallel mid-stage and late-stage studies in patients in hopes of determining if the treatment can improve overall survival for melanoma patients.
“We are hopeful that PLX4032 will provide similar benefit to these patients so urgently in need of effective therapies,” says K. Peter Hirth, Plexxikon's CEO.
Melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer, with 68,000 new cases of the cancer diagnosed in the United States in 2009. Though it can be cured if it is diagnosed and treated early, it can be difficult to control if it spreads to other parts of the body.
August 26, 2010
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-remarkable_result_in_melanoma_drug_trial.html
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