Hope for asbestos cancer victims

A new treatment for a type of lung cancer that leaves its victims with little hope of long-term survival will become available in the next few months.

Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, often caused by exposure to asbestos, affects about 1,700 people a year in the UK. Generally, only one in 10 people will be alive three years after diagnosis.

It killed the film actor Steve McQueen, who was exposed to asbestos while wearing insulated motor-racing suits and possibly when handling insulating materials in the marine corps.

In Britain cases are expected to rise to a peak of 2,500 a year in 2015, when the long-term effects of working with asbestos in the past should take effect.

Today the firm Lilly UK will announce that its drug, pemetrexed, will be available in the new year as the first licensed treatment for pleural mesothelioma.

In trials, patients given the standard drug, cisplatin, survived, on average, for nine months, while those given cisplatin and pemetrexed survived for more than a year.

Prof Hilary Carter, of the Northern Institute of Cancer Research at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, said: "This form of cancer is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage, at which point treatments with radiation therapy or surgery are not an option.

"Until now there has been no licensed chemotherapy available and patients have been more likely to have treatment aimed at relieving symptoms rather than to control the disease."

Prof John Toy, medical director of Cancer Research UK, said: "The number of cases of mesothelioma are rising, and it is by now a significant cancer problem.

"Any advance in helping to manage this illness is most warmly welcomed and the first approval of a drug specifically for dealing with this disease is an important step forward."