Experimental cancer drugs show much promise

A new generation of experimental cancer drugs is poised to upstage current hotshots by attacking the multiple methods tumors use to grow and spread, instead of just one.

These drugs are like a repairman who brings an entire toolbox to a job instead of just a wrench or hammer. They go beyond current favored medicines such as Herceptin, Avastin and Iressa, which have impressed scientists for their ability to precisely target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

At a cancer meeting Friday, doctors reported that one of Pfizer Inc.'s new multitasking drugs shrank tumors in 40 percent of people with advanced kidney cancer. Current treatments do that in only about 1 out of 10 cases.

Some patients have been on the experimental drug for more than a year - far longer than they had been expected to live.

Kurt Bonham is one. The California accountant was only 49 when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer that already had spread to his lungs.

"I'd been given my death sentence," he said.

Now, 13 large masses in his lungs have been reduced to specks.

"If I can have five more years, I think that they can come up with something fandangled that will either cure the cancer or manage it," he said.

Doctors hope the new generation of cancer drugs will do just that by blocking cancer's multiple pathways, such as cutting off the blood supply to a tumor or jamming the "switchboard" it uses to send messages to grow and spread.

The Pfizer drug, so new that it is just called AG-013736 for now, attacks blood supply and one of the switchboard's main lines. Another Pfizer drug, Sutent, also takes this approach. Eleven studies testing it against various cancers will be presented at the meeting, held by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca PLC and Eli Lilly & Co. have multitasking drugs in early stages of development. So does Novartis AG's Novartis Pharmaceuticals division, but its drug, called PTK/ZK, disappointed in a study involving people with advanced colon cancer, doctors reported Friday.

Farthest along of all such drugs is Sorafenib, made by Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., which the Food and Drug Administration already allows limited use of in certain kidney cancer patients.

"Just in the last year or so there are many more options. None of them are FDA-approved yet. Hopefully soon they will be," said Dr. Brian Rini, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher.

He reported results of the kidney cancer study on the Pfizer drug. Of the 52 patients in the study, 29 remain on the drug. Cancer has worsened in only 16, or 30 percent. The rest of the patients dropped out or died. Tumors have all but disappeared in several people.