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Biotech / Medical : Pharma News Only (pfe,mrk,wla, sgp, ahp, bmy, lly) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (616)	8/6/1998 8:47:00 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- August 6, 1998 Bone-Disease Drug Appears to Reduce Death Rate for Breast-Cancer Patients By ROBERT LANGRETH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL A popular class of drugs for bone disease might also help prevent complications and deaths from breast cancer, a surprising new study indicates. The three-year study of about 300 women found that patients who took the osteoporosis drug clodronate -- one of a new class of osteoporosis and bone-loss drugs called bisphosphonates -- in addition to standard therapy, had a dramatically reduced risk of having the cancer recur and kill them. Overall, the drug reduced the death rate by two-thirds in patients at a high risk of recurrence, according to the study published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. If this result is confirmed in larger studies, the finding could benefit as many as 100,000 breast-cancer patients a year in the U.S. "This is a very exciting result," said Clifford Hudis, chief of breast-cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Because the bisphosphonate drugs have fewer side effects than most cancer drugs, "it is likely that oncologists will use this class of drugs routinely in the future" in breast-cancer treatment. Clodronate, made by Roche Holding Ltd., is sold in Europe, where the study was conducted, but isn't available in the U.S. However, similar drugs are sold here, including Fosamax from Merck & Co. and Aredia from Novartis AG of Switzerland. Doctors said all the drugs are closely related and it is likely they would show a similar effect. "Other medications [in the same class] would almost certainly work" against breast cancer, said endocrinologist Gregory Mundy of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. Still, researchers cautioned that the finding is preliminary and needs to be directly confirmed with other bisphosphonate drugs before doctors start giving them to all breast-cancer patients. The study is the latest in a wave of reported advances in preventing and treating breast cancer. In April, a massive study showed that Zeneca Group PLC's tamoxifen could prevent breast cancer. Then in May, Genentech Inc. found its experimental Herceptin breast cancer drug could help many advanced cases. Breast cancer frequently spreads to the bone. Researchers say the bone drugs may be effective against cancer because they slow the growth of new tumors in the bone, rather than directly attacking cancer cells. "Bone is like fertilizer for tumors" because it contains growth-promoting chemicals that can spur tumor growth, explained Dr. Mundy; the bisphosphonate drugs may turn off the release of these growth promoters and retard new bone tumors. The bone tumor retardation, in turn, may prevent tumors from spreading to yet other places, such as vital organs, researchers say. In the study, scientists from the University of Heidelberg in Germany followed 302 breast-cancer patients who also had some tumor cells present in the bone, a sign they were at high risk for recurrence. After the breast tumor was removed surgically, patients were given either clodronate along with standard drug therapy for two years, or just standard therapy. After an average follow-up period of three years, only 21 of 157 patients in the clodronate group developed distant metastases, compared with 42 of 145 in the standard therapy group. Only six patients in the clodronate group died, compared with 22 in the control group. A Roche spokeswoman said the company was testing a new, more powerful bisphosphonate drug for both breast cancer and osteoporosis. Novartis also said it is seriously considering a large new prevention study of its Aredia in breast-cancer patients; Aredia is already approved for treating existing bone metastases. Merck, however, said it had no immediate plans to study Fosamax as a treatment for breast cancer. Return to top of page \| Format for printing Copyright c 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.