Xeloda filed for advanced stomach cancer
pharmafile | July 21, 2006 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
Roche has filed its drug Xeloda to treat patients with advanced stomach cancer, the second biggest cancer killer worldwide.
The oral cancer drug Xeloda is to be used in combination with another chemotherapy drug (cisplatin) for the treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancer, and Roche says results show it is a significant advance over standard treatment.
A phase III trial compared the combination with infusional 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) plus cisplatin as first-line treatment of the disease and found patients lived at least as long on the new combination.
Significantly, the percentage of patients whose cancer shrunk was superior in Xeloda/cisplatin, and Roche say this encouraging data, combined with the simpler (and therefore cheaper) administration of the drug makes it an attractive option.
"These new robust data are very encouraging — for the first time a viable alternative to the current standard intravenous treatment will become available for stomach cancer patients in Europe," stated lead investigator Prof. Y K Kang of the Asan Medical Centre, Seoul, South Korea.
In Europe alone, nearly 140,000 people die from stomach cancer each year. The disease affects twice as many men as women and occurs more frequently in people aged over 55 years.
Stomach cancer is the fourth most diagnosed cancer worldwide, but there are regional differences from continent to continent. Among tumours of the upper gastrointestinal tract, oesophagogastric cancer is more common in the West, while stomach cancer is predominant in the East.
First marketed in 2001, Xeloda is already licensed in a variety of settings to treat breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
The drug is one of Roche's top ten selling drugs, and earned 796 million euros ($641 million) in 2005, up 39% on the previous year.
