Download TITLE: New drug shows promise for group of lung cancer patients

7/27/2015
New drug shows promise for group of lung cancer patients - Channel NewsAsia
This story was printed from channelnewsasia.com
TITLE: New drug shows promise for group of lung cancer
patients
By Lynette Tan, TODAY
POSTED: 27 Jul 2015 18:11
URL: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/new-drug-shows-promise/2010306.html
TODAY reports: Patients' tumour growth has stabilised for a median of 17 months, and it has
also improved patients' survival outcomes by a median of 49 months.
SINGAPORE: A new drug targeted at treating a sub-group of late-stage lung cancer has shown
promising results, with patients’ tumour growth stabilising for a median of 17 months. The drug has
also improved patients' survival outcomes by a median of 49 months.
About 240 patients took part in the clinical trials of Ceritinib and they suffer from a sub-group of nonsmall cell lung cancer caused by an abnormality in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene,
which increases the growth of cancer cells.
They had previously gone on or are intolerant to Crizotinib, which was the only available targeted
treatment option for patients with this type of late-stage lung cancer.
Ceritinib was approved recently in April this year after the conclusion of early-phase clinical trials,
which involved 20 centres from nine countries including the National Cancer Centre Singapore.
Lung cancer is among the most common cancers affecting the Singapore resident population and nonsmall cell lung cancer accounts for 85 to 90 per cent of all cases. Of those, 8 to 10 per cent is driven
by mutation of the ALK gene.
Read the original TODAY report here.
-TODAY/eg
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