- SATURDAY, May 31 (HealthDay News) — Patients diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer — which historically carries a grim prognosis — nearly
doubled their overall survival when the cancer drug Gemzar was used after
surgery, new research shows.

Unfortunately, only about 15 percent of pancreatic cancer patients are
even candidates for surgery.

“Pancreatic cancer is probably the deadliest cancer that we face,” said
Dr. Richard Schilsky, president-elect of the American Society of Clinical
Oncology (ASCO) and a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.
“It's frequently not even diagnosed until it's very far advanced, when
treatments are not very effective.”

Schilsky spoke at a teleconference earlier this month; the results of
the new trial, a follow-up from data first presented in 2005, were
released Saturday at ASCO's annual meeting in Chicago.

Gemzar (gemcitabine) is the standard treatment for pancreatic cancer
that can't be removed surgically.

At three years, 23.5 percent of participants taking Gemzar had survived
without a recurrence, versus 7.5 percent in the placebo group; that number
dropped to 16.5 percent at five years, versus 5.5 percent in the control
arm.

Overall, 36.5 percent of Gemzar patients were still alive at the
five-year mark (vs. 19.5 percent in the placebo group) and 21 percent were
still alive after five years (vs. 9 percent in placebo).

“Treatment with gemcitabine as compared to observational in patients
with resected [surgically removed] pancreatic cancer resulted in
improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival,” said study
co-author Dr. Helmut Oettle, of Charite University Medical School in
Berlin. “Adjuvant treatment [with Gemzar] doubled long-term survival rate
after five years compared with the observation group. Gemcitabine should
be the standard of care for adjuvant treatment of pancreatic patients.”

“This represents a very substantial improvement in outcome for these
individuals, and I think we can look forward to seeing widespread adoption
of gemcitabine for patients with pancreatic cancer that can be surgically
removed,” Schilsky said.

Researchers at the ASCO meeting also reported progress with another
tough-to-treat cancer, advanced kidney cancer.

While there have been significant advances in recent years with drugs
such as Sutent (sunitinib), that success has brought a new challenge: How
to treat patients who don't respond to the latest generation of new
therapies.

Enter everolimus, a drug which interferes with blood supply to the
tumor and which is one of the first in a relatively new class of
compounds. Patients randomized to receive everolimus plus best existing
therapy had a 70 percent reduction in the risk of recurrence or death,
compared to patients who received best existing therapy alone. For
patients on everolimus, it took about four months for the cancer to
return, versus about two months in the placebo group.

“While that may not sound like an enormous leap forward, it's actually
a very important observation for several reasons,” Schilsky explained.
“This drug is targeting a different molecular pathway compared to
anti-angiogenesis drugs [those that block blood supply to the tumor], so
it's working in a completely different way. Secondly, when we make these
observations, not only do patients benefit from a delay in progression of
their cancer, but this kind of observation always gives us a new lead and
an interest in moving these drugs up earlier into cancer treatment.”

“A setting of unmet clinical need that has now been filled,” added
study author Dr. Robert Motzer, an attending physician at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “Everolimus should be the
standard of care in this setting, pending approval by regulatory
authorities.”

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more on pancreatic
cancer.