'Smart' pill may stop cancer spreading

Published on Sunday 5 June 2011 19:26

A NEW "smart" pill hailed as a breakthrough could extend the lives of people with the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Malignant melanoma kills more than 2,000 people in the UK each year, and more than 11,000 people annually develop the disease.

Now, a new pill could offer patients targeted therapy when their disease has spread around the body.

It works by acting on a faulty gene, BRAF, which is found in half of terminally ill patients whose cancer has spread to other organs.

Compared to standard chemotherapy, 84 per cent of patients given vemurafenib pills twice a day were still alive six months later compared with 64 per cent on standard chemotherapy.

Vemurafenib also reduced the risk of the disease worsening by 74 per cent compared to chemotherapy.

And the response rate - patients whose tumours got smaller - was almost nine times higher in the pill treatment group (48.4 per cent) compared with those on chemotherapy (5.5 per cent).

British experts running the trial stopped it early so they could switch all patients in the chemotherapy group on to the new drug.

Vemurafenib works by interfering with the gene and stopping the signal that causes melanomas to grow uncontrollably.

Blocking the BRAF gene can lead to cancer cells dying and tumour shrinking.

Experts are also conducting research to find out whether vemurafenib could be used for other cancers, including ovarian, thyroid and bowel cancer.

Professor Richard Marais, whose work at the Institute of Cancer Research demonstrated the importance of BRAF in melanoma, said: "This is the biggest breakthrough in melanoma treatment in more than 30 years.

The results will change our approach to treating this disease."

Roche, the firm behind the drug, has now submitted data to European and US regulator to apply for a licence.