NYT: New Biotech Drugs Are Producing Gains Against Cancer

[DeepModem Mom]

New Biotech Drugs Are Producing Gains Against Cancer
By ANDREW POLLACK and LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: May 14, 2005


ORLANDO, Fla., May 13 - New drugs developed using the tools of biotechnology are helping prevent relapses among cancer patients and prolonging some lives, cancer specialists said Friday at the opening of the biggest annual conference devoted to treatment of the disease.

Much of the attention at this year's meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology is directed at "targeted therapies," which take aim at the underlying molecular mechanisms that prompt tumor growth.

Those drugs have been a focus at previous conferences, but the evidence for their effectiveness is mounting, and experts are predicting that many cancer patients, if not most, will eventually receive at least one such drug.

"Targeted therapy is really a clinical reality," Dr. Roy S. Herbst of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center said at a news conference here. He called the drugs the "smart bombs" of cancer treatment.

A drug called Avastin, which works by choking off the blood supply to tumors, prolongs the lives of patients with lung cancer and also significantly delays the worsening of breast cancer, according to the results of clinical trials presented here. Another cancer drug, Herceptin, when used after surgery to remove breast tumors, cuts by about half the chance that breast cancer will recur....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/health/14cancer.html