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Comprehensive Oncology Center of the Ohio State University via CNN 
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(CNN) – Younger women with a common form of advanced bad cancer have seen their survival rates improve dramatically when they are treated with a drug that targets cancer cells, according to the conclusions of an international clinical trial.
The study was conducted among 672 women under 59 who received a drug called ribociclib, in combination with a common form of hormone treatment.
According to the results, 70% of women who took the combination therapy were still alive after 42 months, compared to 46% of women treated with hormone and placebo alone.
The researchers said that this corresponded to a 29% lower risk of death in patients receiving combination therapy.
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists in Chicago on Saturday and will be published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
This study is the first to show a significant benefit in terms of survival for premenopausal women with hormone-positive metastatic bad cancer, according to the lead author, Dr. Sara Hurvitz, who leads the study. Clinical research program on bad cancer at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center of UCLA.
"This trial was unique because it involved younger, premenopausal women," Hurvitz said. "This is an important group to study because advanced bad cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women ages 20 to 59. And the vast majority of bad cancers are positive for bad cancer. hormone receptors. "
Women who received ribociclib experienced a median of 23.8 months without progression of their disease compared to 13 months for women who received placebo.
"It's great to see that we are extending someone's life, not just the time his illness is being controlled," Hurvitz said. "Very few trials show an improvement in overall survival, which is what is so phenomenal in the data."
"Advanced bad cancer in pre-menopausal women can be very aggressive," said Dr. Harold Burstein of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in a statement. "It is important and encouraging to see targeted therapy that dramatically increases the survival of younger women with this disease." Burstein was not involved in the research.
According to the World Health Organization, bad cancer causes the largest number of cancer-related deaths among women.
This year alone, an estimated 627,000 women have died from bad cancer worldwide, accounting for about 15% of all cancer deaths among women, according to WHO. In the United States, bad cancer is the most common cancer in women. About 41,000 women and 450 men die each year from bad cancer, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ribociclib and hormone therapy have already been used to treat bad cancer in postmenopausal women. Last year, the combination treatment was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in premenopausal women.
"This study confirms that the benefits of these drugs are similar in pre- and post-menopausal patients with advanced hormone-receptor-positive bad cancer, and it further confirms the clinical value of the addition of the ribociclib for these patients, "said co-author of the study, Dr. Debu Tripathy of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.
The most common adverse effect observed was a decrease in the number of white blood cells, which can lead to infections.
The study was funded by pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis, which markets ribociclib under the Kisqali brand. The drug, which is taken in pill form, costs more than $ 12,000 a month, according to the GoodRx Prescription Drug Prices website.
Jacqueline Howard of CNN contributed to this report
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