Two Drugs Prove Better Than One
In early testing, new combo shows promise against kidney cancer
 (HealthDay News) -- Research is offering new hope for fighting kidney cancer.
A combination of drugs is proving to be exponentially better than when either drug is used alone.
And this is good news for the thousands of Americans who are battling the disease. The National Cancer Institute says that almost 55,000 new cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed every year, and 13,000 people die from the disease in a year.
Kidney cancer develops most often in people older than 40, but no one knows the exact causes of this disease. The cancer is especially deadly, because it rarely causes symptoms until it has reached an advanced stage. And, by the time kidney cancer rates stage IV status, it has spread. Only about 10 percent of people with kidney cancer live more than five years after diagnosis.
The drugs that were combined were interferon alpha, which increases the body's ability to fight off tumors and infections, and sorafenib (sold under the brand name Nexavar), which cuts off a tumor's blood supply. The study found that the two led to significant tumor shrinkage in 33 percent of the participants.
"We found that by combining a drug that enlists the immune system's help in combating cancer with one that cuts off a tumor's blood supply, we could substantially increase patients' response rates to treatment," lead investigator Dr. Jared Gollob, of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center in Durham, N.C., said in a prepared statement.
Used alone, each drug is successful in fighting just 5 percent to 10 percent of tumors. The study found that the combination is much more effective.
But that wasn't the end of the good news. The researchers also found that the combination of the two drugs kept tumors at bay longer, doubling the time before tumors began to grow again.
According to Gollob, most tumors start to re-grow after about five or six months when treated with either drug alone.
Gollob and his research team gave 40 study participants sorafenib in pill form twice daily and interferon alpha injections three time a week for eight weeks. If a person's tumor had not grown or had shrunk after eight weeks, they repeated the cycle after a two-week break, until the tumors disappeared or the cancer worsened. The researchers monitored the tumors using computerized-tomography (CT) scans.
The approach destroyed tumors in two of the 40 participants.
The findings came from a pilot study -- a small, early study of a new treatment. The researchers plan to begin a multi-site clinical trial that will focus on the impact of giving people increasing doses of sorafenib alone after their tumors have shrunk as much as possible on the combination treatment.
Kidney cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute, has a variety of risk factors thought to affect its development:
- Smoking: Cigarette smokers are twice as likely as nonsmokers to develop kidney cancer.
- Obesity.
- High blood pressure.
- Gender: Men are more likely than women to be diagnosed with kidney cancer.
On the Web
To learn more about kidney cancer visit the National Cancer Institute.
SOURCES:
Duke University , news release, July 30, 2007; National Cancer Institute (www.cancer.gov)
Author:
Anne Thompson
Publication Date:
Aug. 31, 2008
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