New drug effective against pancreatic cancer

New drug effective against pancreatic cancer

An international study that have worked 161 hospitals around the world, eight of them Spanish-, has been shown to include nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane ®) in the treatment of cancer pancreas -combining this drug with gemcitabine , the only available up to now-reduced mortality by 30% and slows the progression of the disease.

In the investigation, the results have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine , involved 861 patients with pancreatic cancer progress, which was divided into two groups. Patients in one group were administered chemotherapy standard in these cases, while the other, plus gemcitabine, also received nab-paclitaxel intravenously.

With the new combination of drugs is managed to reduce the mortality of patients 30% and disease progression happened 6.7 months to 8.5 months delayed. One year after diagnosis, 35% of patients treated with both drugs was still alive, compared with 22% of the control group.

Although patients treated with nab-paclitaxel had more side effects such as fatigue, neutropenia (low levels of neutrophils, a type of white blood cells in the blood), neuropathy, etc., experts have pointed out that in general the treatment is well tolerated, and the results show that the combination of these drugs is more effective than gemcitabine alone.

The nab-paclitaxel was recently approved by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug), and is expected to be commercialized in Europe by the end of the year. While in Spain also have to be approved by the Ministry of Health, patients can now access the drug through clinical trials or by way of compassionate use.