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Pfizer's Sutent Fails to Improval Survival Time in Lung Cancer Research
Pfizer Inc.’s cancer treatment Sutent failed in a large-scale study to improve overall survival in patients with a form of lung cancer.
The drug, when combined with Roche AG’s Tarceva, improved the length of time patients lived without their tumor progressing, though that didn’t translate into an overall benefit in survival when compared with Tarceva alone, the New York-based company said today in a statement.
Sutent was approved in 2006 to treat cancer of the kidneys and digestive tract by chocking off a tumor’s blood supply. Researchers from Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, theorized the drug would show similar effects in other tumor types and began studying it in a wide range of cancers. Since its approval, Sutent has failed to show a benefit in cancer of the liver, breast, and colon.
“We believe that the statistically significant improvement in progression free survival is an important finding,” said Mace Rothenberg, vice president of clinical development and medical affairs for cancer at Pfizer, in the statement. “Over the next few months, we will conduct an in-depth analysis to gain further insight into these results and determine whether we can identify one or more subgroups of non-small cell lung cancer patients for a future trial in either previously untreated or recurrent disease.”
Further Analysis
Pfizer said it will analyze the results to see if there were any subgroups of patients who may have benefited. The drugmaker is continuing to study Sutent for certain types of prostate cancer and kidney cancer, the statement said.
Today’s study was from the final stages of testing required to get U.S. approval for treating advanced non-small cell lung cancer. In the study, Pfizer looked at the effects of Sutent in combination with Tarceva in about 900 previously treated patients. The company started the study in September 2007.
Lung cancer killed 159,000 people in the U.S. last year and 219,000 new cases were diagnosed, according to the National Cancer Institute. About 85 percent of people with lung cancer will die within five years of being diagnosed because the disease usually isn’t caught until its late stages and there are few effective treatments, according to the American Cancer Society.
Pfizer said it plans to release the full results of the study, called SUN-1087, in October at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Italy.
To contact the reporter on this story: Shannon Pettypiece in New York at spettypiece@bloomberg.net.
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