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30-Oct-2007 - Pfizer's Axitinib Slows Kidney Cancer in Early Clinical Trial
Pfizer's Axitinib Slows Kidney Cancer in Early Clinical Trial
By Eva von Schaper
Pfizer Inc.'s experimental drug Axitinib slowed the growth of Kidney Cancer in an early clinical trial, giving the world's largest drugmaker a potential back-up for its Sutent medicine.
The product curbed the disease in almost half of patients who hadn't benefited from standard treatment, a study published today in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology said. Pfizer funded and designed the trial and collected the data.
The New York-based company said in August that it will spend 20 percent of its research budget on cancer medicines. Pfizer has 20 new Tumour treatments in development designed to help replace nearly half of the 2006 revenue that will be lost to generic competition beginning in three years. Sutent, approved last year in the U.S. to treat Kidney Cancer and a type of stomach tumor, had sales of $151 million in the third quarter.
``Axitinib might be a promising drug for treating cancer that has spread beyond the kidney, Olivier Rixe, an Oncologist at the University of Paris, wrote in the paper. The findings need to be confirmed in a larger trial comparing the drug to existing therapy or a placebo, Rixe said.
Scientists followed 52 patients whose advancing Kidney Cancer had not responded to treatment with Cytokines, a group of drugs derived from proteins in the body's disease-fighting immune system. Twenty-three participants received some benefit from Axitinib. About 30 patients experienced high blood pressure related to the treatment that researchers say may be managed by changing the drug's dose.
Similar to Sutent
The American Cancer Society, based in Atlanta, estimates that there will be more than 50,000 new cases of Kidney Cancer in the U.S. this year, and almost 13,000 people will die from the disease.
Axitinib is chemically similar to Sutent, which stops cancer cells from dividing and chokes off a tumor's blood supply. Novartis AG of Basel, Switzerland is also developing a closely related follow-on therapy to its best-selling Gleevec leukemia medicine, called Tasigna.
The treatments belong to a group of cancer drugs known as targeted therapies that also includes Roche Holding AG and Genentech Inc.'s Avastin and Herceptin. The medicines are designed to fight cancer while causing less damage to healthy tissue than Chemotherapy.
Follow-on treatments may help drugmakers hold on to sales as their best-selling primary medicines go off patent. Both products would compete with Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer AG and Emeryville, California-based Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Nexavar cancer treatment.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eva von Schaper in Barcelona at [email protected]
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