SAN ANTONIO — Breast-cancer experts are cheering what could be some of the biggest advances in more than a decade: two new medicines that significantly delay the time until women with very advanced cases get worse.
In a large international study, an experimental drug from Genentech called pertuzumab held cancer at bay for a median of 18 months when given with standard treatment, versus 12 months for others given only the usual treatment. It strongly appears to be improving survival, and follow-up is continuing to see whether it does.
“You don’t see that very often. . . . It’s a spectacular result,” said one study leader, Dr. Sandra Swain, medical director of Washington Hospital Center’s cancer institute.
In a second study, another drug long used in organ transplants but not tried against breast cancer — everolimus, sold as Afinitor by Novartis AG — kept cancer in check for a median of seven months in women whose disease was worsening despite treatment with hormone-blocking drugs.
Afinitor works in a novel way, seems “unusually effective” and sets a new standard of care, said Dr. Peter Ravdin, breast-cancer chief at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He has no role in the work or ties to drugmakers.
The results were released Wednesday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, and some were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
“These are powerful advances . . . an important step forward,” said Dr. Paul Burstein, a breast expert at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston who had no role in the studies.
A reality check: The new drugs probably will be very expensive — up to $10,000 a month — and so far have not proved to be cures. Doctors hope they might be when given to women with early-stage cancers when cure is possible, rather than the very advanced cases treated in these studies.
Even short of a cure, about 40,000 U.S. women each year have cancer that spreads beyond the breast, and treatment can make a big difference.
Rachel Midgett is an example. The 39-year-old Houston woman has breast cancer that spread to multiple parts of her liver, yet she ran a half-marathon in Las Vegas on Sunday. She has had three scans since starting on Afinitor nine months ago, and “every time, my liver lesions keep shrinking,” she said.
