University of Illinois at Chicago’s new breast cancer drug is safe and can halt disease progression, according to a Phase 1 trial

pharmafile | August 28, 2020 | News story | Medical Communications |  Cancer, Cancers, breast cancer 

A new breast cancer drug, called TTC-352, can halt the spread of the disease and is safe according to a Phase 1 clinical trial.

The drug is being developed and tested by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a type of hormone therapy, which targets oestrogen receptor-positive types of breast cancer. This form of the disease is created by oestrogen fuelling the cancer’s growth and the hormone therapy works through blocking production in the body to minimise this growth. However, currently half of all women treated with hormone therapies become resistant to them, which often leaves chemotherapy as the only option to remove the cancer.

In the Phase 1 study, 15 women with metastatic breast cancer who had previously been treated with several rounds of hormone therapy, and some with chemotherapy, were enrolled. Six of the patients experienced the disease stabilising with a lack of disease progression. Two of the patients saw this for six months and four saw it for three months.

The doses of the therapy given were in line with therapeutic levels that are standard in hormone therapy.

Debra Tonetti, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy, and the author of the study, said on the trials results: “This is very encouraging because these participants were at an advanced stage of their disease, and we saw that their cancers stopped growing for a significant amount of time.”

Conor Kavanagh