Roche ‘Smart Bomb’ Cancer Drug Delays Growth of Breast Tumors

By Naomi Kresge and Robert Langreth - 2012-06-03T12:36:19Z

An experimental breast cancer drug from Roche Holding AG (ROG) that carries chemotherapy directly into malignant cells while bypassing healthy ones delayed tumors longer and with fewer side effects than an established therapy.

The treatment, combining Roches Herceptin with an older chemotherapy medicine, delayed progression of tumors 3.2 months longer than GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)s Tykerb with chemotherapy in women with advanced disease. The data is being reported today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.

More patients on the drug, dubbed T-DM1, were alive after two years, though the difference fell short of statistical significance. Still, the results are the first proof that using an antibody to deliver a toxic dose of chemotherapy into a solid tumor can work, said Kimberly Blackwell, a study author and professor of medicine at Duke University, in an interview.

It is fantastic data, said Shanu Modi, a breast cancer oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who was not involved in the current trial. If approved, it is going to be rapidly taken up by the oncology community. For sure, I will be using a lot of it.

Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland, is in talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and plans to file for marketing approval in the U.S. and Europe by the end of the year, said Sandra Horning, head of oncology research for Roche. A final review of survival data is due in 2014, she said.

The Swiss drugmaker used technology from ImmunoGen Inc. (IMGN), a Waltham, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, to strap Herceptin together with a compound derived from a chemotherapy drug that proved too toxic for patients two decades ago. The combination delivers the powerful treatment straight to the tumor -- avoiding healthy cells and releasing its payload only once it gets to the cancer cells.

Cancer researchers have dreamed for decades of developing smart bombs that can deliver cancer-killing agents directly to the tumor, Blackwell said in the interview at the conference.

The study looked at women whose disease had progressed after previous treatment with Herceptin and chemotherapy. The experimental treatment delayed progression of the disease for 9.6 months, versus 6.4 months for the standard therapy. About 65 percent of patients who got T-DM1 were still alive after two years, compared with 47.5 percent of patients who got Tykerb and chemotherapy.

Modi and Blackwell predicted in interviews that a survival benefit will be proven with longer patient follow-up. Blackwell said the survival difference may turn out to be more than a year.

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Roche ‘Smart Bomb’ Cancer Drug Delays Growth of Breast Tumors