Tykerb reduced Brain Tumors Spread from Breast Cancer

When used in combination with another breast cancer drug, Tykerb (lapatinib) appeared to reduce the size of brain tumors in women whose breast cancer had spread to the brain.

This was the main result of an extended arm of a phase 2 clinical trial, said the drug company GlaxoSmithKline Plc to the 30th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday 16th December. The symposium was sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and the study was listed as abstract 60761 in the symposium.

The study, which included 49 patients with breast cancer that had spread to other parts of the body (metastatic breast cancer), including the brain, showed that 20 per cent of the ones on Tykerb and Xeloda (capecitabine, another cancer drug) experienced a 50 per cent reduction in measurable volume of brain tumors due to metastasis.

Also, 37 per cent of the patients had a brain tumor volume reduction of at least 20 per cent.

These results are important because nearly one third of women with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer are likely to experience the cancer spreading to the brain and central nervous system.

Dr. Nancy U. Lin, lead study investigator and Instructor in Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, Massachusetts said:

"As women live longer with advanced breast cancer, some are developing brain metastases that are getting worse despite standard treatments, such as radiation."

"Very few medications have shown activity in the treatment of brain metastases, in particular HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients and therefore, these data are quite encouraging," she added.

Tykerb is a small molecule HER2 (ErbB2) kinase inhibitor taken in tablet form, once a day. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in March this year. It is used with Xeloda to treat patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer whose tumors over express HER2 and who have already been treated with other drugs such as anthracycline, a taxane and trastuzumab (Herceptin).

The drug manufacturer said other studies were under way to discover the full potential of Tykerb for preventing and treating brain metastases.

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