Two new promising treatments against aggressive skin cancer
The Monde.fr with AFP . • updated
After more than three decades without new treatment for advanced melanoma, laboratories are developing these last years of the effective weapons against the aggressive cancer of the skin, which the last two were unveiled Monday 4 June in the United States. These two new officers, the Dabrafenib and the Trametinib, both produced by the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, are anti-cancer precision targeting of tumor specific mechanisms.
DECREASE IN THE RISK OF PROGRESSION OF TUMOR
The Trametinib neutralizes a protein called MEK, which contributes to the growth of cancer. The Dabrafenib prevents it gene mutant BRAF to produce a protein that boosts the progression of melanoma, cancer has the highest in the world. Patients in the study with the Trametinib experienced a median time of 4.8 months during which their cancer has not progressed compared to a month and a half in the group subject to standard chemotherapy, is a reduction of 55% of the risk of spread of the tumor.
These patients also saw their risk of dying decreased by 46% compared to those treated with chemotherapy, said Dr. Caroline Robert, head of the Department of Dermatology at the Institute Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif, who led this clinical trial of phase 3 in which 322 patients participated. "The Trametinib will probably become another treatment of first line for treating advanced melanoma", predicted, confident.
The second clinical trial with the Dabrafenib showed a decline of 70% of the risk of progression of melanoma in participants compared to those treated with standard chemotherapy (5.1 months compared with 2.7 months). 250 Participants in this study of phase 3, of which 187 have been treated with the Dabrafenib, had not been previously treated and suffered from an inoperable melanoma, said Dr. Axel Hauschild, Professor of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Keil in Germany, the principal investigator. Overall survival data are not yet sufficiently complete, he added. In addition, Dr. Hauschild said that patients in the Dabrafenib Group had serious side effects of the skin.
80% OF SKIN CANCER ARE MELANOMA
These clinical studies were presented to the 48e Annual Conference of theAmerican Society of Clinical Oncology meeting this weekend in Chicago, where several other significant advances were announced, including against advanced breast and prostate cancer. So far the Zelboraf (Vemurafenib) of the Swiss laboratory Roche is only targeted therapy that has been authorized, in 2011, by the authorities of the drugs in the United States (FDA) and Europe to treat advanced melanoma. This treatment targets the gene mutant BRAF, present in half of metastasized melanoma.
"For three decades we have no new treatment for metastatic melanoma but now we are quickly catching up with us", said to the press Dr. Hauschild. In 2011, the FDA approved time two treatments for melanoma, Zelboraf of rock and Yervoy (Ipilimumab) of the U.S. laboratory Bristol-Myers Squibb, an antibody that stimulates the immune system; the next would be Dabrafenib. "The results of the clinical trial with the Dabrafenib represent a new advance against melanoma and establish one basis for other clinical studies to evaluate the role of the Dabrafenib in combination with other anticancer", found this doctor.
GlaxoSmithKline announced May 29 the start of a clinical trial of phase 3 combining the Dabrafenib and the Trametinib. For analysts from Citigroup, the success of the Dabrafenib and the Trametinib could steal the spotlight at the rock Zelboraf, which paved the way for these new anticancer. According to the World Health Organization, the skin cancer is 66 000 deaths per year in the world, of which about 80% are melanoma. M
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