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(Newser)
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New drugs dramatically improve the chances of survival for some people with difficult-to-treat lung, breast and prostate cancers, doctors said at the world's largest cancer conference. Among the recipients, there is Roszell Mack Jr. who, at age 87, is still able to work on a horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky, nine years after the diagnosis of lung cancer that s'. was extended to the bones and lymph nodes. "I go there every day, I'm the first one," said Mack, who helped test Merck's Keytruda, a therapy that helps the immune system identify and fight cancer. "I feel good and I have a good quality of life." The disadvantage: Many of these drugs cost $ 100,000 or more a year. Some details:
- Lung cancer: Immunotherapy drugs such as Keytruda have transformed the treatment of many types of cancer, but they are still relatively new and do not help most patients. The longest study to date on Keytruda in patients with advanced lung cancer revealed that 23% of those who had received the drug as part of their initial treatment had survived at least five years, compared to 16 % of those who had tried another treatment.
- Breast cancer: In a study of 672 women with "positive hormone, HER2-negative" cancer who had spread or who were very advanced, the addition of Novartis Kisqali drug to hormone antagonists usual, because the initial treatment helped more than a single hormone treatment. After 3.5 years, 70% of the women living in Kisqali were alive, compared to 46% of the others.
- ProstateTwo new drugs were shown to increase survival when used as chemotherapy or Zytiga in men who were on regular hormone therapy and who continued to help. The new drugs are Xtandi, sold by Pfizer and Astellas Pharma Inc., and the drug Janssen Erleada.
Read the full story of the AP for more information. (Or read about a couple with cancer who received $ 2 billion.)
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