New Breast Cancer Drug Extends Lives in Clinical Trial
New Breast Cancer Drug Extends Lives in Clinical Trial – In a clinical trial, breast cancer patients lived an average of 15 months longer when they received new drug Perjeta along with Herceptin.
Here’s some potential good news for breast cancer patients. Patients with advanced breast cancer were given the drug, Perjeta, in a clinical trial conducted by Roche Pharmaceuticals, which also manufactures the drug. They found that patients who were treated with the drug, on average, lived 16 months longer than those who were not.
The positive results came when the drug was used in combination with the drug Herceptin. The study looked at more than 800 patients from 25 countries, who had metastatic cancer tumors that were HER2-positive – that means it’s a type of breast cancer that tested positive for a protein that promotes cancer-cell growth.
According to the National Cancer Institute, these cancers, which produce too much HER2-receptor protein are a particularly aggressive form of the disease and account for approximately 20% of all breast cancer diagnoses.
But as The Guardian points out, Perjeta is a new “but very expensive cancer drug has shown unprecedented benefits …. The results will raise the stakes in the battle in the UK over the funding of cancer drugs.”
To break it down, Perjeta costs about $3,900 per 420 mg vial . To start, patients need double that, and then it’s 1 vial every 3 weeks. The first double dose alone would bring the total to $7, 800. Then a year’s supply would cost about $70,000.
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