NEW YORK (AP) – Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said its T-DM1 therapy extended the lives of women with breast cancer by several months. T-DM1 combines the active agent in Roche’s drug Herceptin with another drug and a chemical that keeps the drugs linked until they reach a cancer cell where the cocktail can be released. ImmunoGen Inc., of Waltham, Mass., made the technology that combined the drugs.
The results came from the first of three clinical trials of T-DM1. Roche will use data from those trials when it files for approval of the drug in the U.S and Europe later this year. ImmunoGen said that Roche is planning three more trials that will start in 2013.
One trial will evaluate T-DM1 by itself in patients who have received preliminary nonsurgical treatment and still have some cancer remaining in their bodies. Another trial will test T-DM1 in combination with chemotherapy and the drug pertuzumab in similar patients. The third trial will test T-DM1, chemotherapy, and pertuzumab as an additional or adjuvant therapy.
Date: June 4, 2012
Source: Associated Press
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
