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The combination of an innovative drug with hormone therapy could prolong the survival of some women with advanced breast cancer, according to a test.
Women who received palbociclib and hormonal therapy experienced up to 10 months longer than those receiving hormone therapy alone.
This has also delayed the time when women need to start chemotherapy, which often has debilitating side effects.
Experts say the preliminary results of the trial are very encouraging.
But they point out that treatment is not a cure and will not work for everyone.
The clinical trial, conducted by researchers from the London Cancer Institute and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, has tested the benefit of adding palbociclib to fulvestrant for hormone therapy in 521 women with advanced breast cancer with positive estrogen receptors, whose tumors did not have the gene HER2.
Positive estrogen receptor breast cancers are the most common form of breast cancer, accounting for about 70% of cases.
The trial examined the effect of palbociclib on overall survival of women and whether it could delay the use of chemotherapy.
The analysis found that in women whose tumors had responded well to hormone therapy (410 out of 521 women), the treatment prolonged survival from 10 months to 39.7 months on average, as against 29, 7 months in women receiving fulvestrant and a manikin. pill (placebo).
However, the treatment did not prolong survival in those who previously had not responded well to hormone therapy.
Three years after enrollment in the study, 49.6% of women who received both palbociclib and fulvestrant were still alive, compared to 40.8% of women treated with fulvestrant alone.
The group of women who received the combination treatment also took nine months before the start of chemotherapy.
"More precious time"
Professor Nicholas Turner, who led the study, said, "The development of palbociclib is one of the most important advances in the treatment of women with advanced breast cancer in the past two decades.
"This drug can offer women more precious time with their loved ones and, since it is targeted treatment, it is much sweeter than chemotherapy and allows many women to pursue normally their life. "
NICE approved the use of Palbociclib in England in November 2017, but this product is currently only available for women with positive estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer diagnosed after the beginning of the spread of the disease.
The authors of this new study hope that it will also be made available to women whose breast cancer has already been treated with hormone therapy.
Professor Charles Swanton, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, said the results were "very encouraging".
"Although the treatment has given some people with breast cancer valuable extra months, it is not a cure and will not work for everyone.
"So we need to better understand the weak points of breast cancer and exploit them to develop even more effective treatments in the future."
Delyth Morgan, general manager of Breast Cancer Now, said the results were "exciting", but more research was needed.
Lady Morgan said it was important that NICE reform its method of evaluating therapeutic associations so that breast cancer patients could benefit from the treatment.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented simultaneously at the Congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology in Munich, Germany.
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