Men with advanced prostate cancer could get access within months to a once-a-day pill described as being as big a breakthrough for treatment of the disease as Herceptin has been for breast cancer.
Enzalutamide, previously known by the monicker ?MDV3100?, has been found to extend the lives of those with prostate cancer that has spread to other organs by an average of five months, from 13.5 to 18.5 months.
New data now show it also significantly improves quality of life, reducing the intense pain the disease can cause when it has spread to the bones, giving sufferers more energy, and renewing their appetites.
Now Astellas, the drugs firm that makes it, has submitted an application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to be able to market it.
Dr Gerhardt Attard, who has helped lead clinical trials at the Institute for Cancer Research (ICR) in London, hoped it would only be a matter of months before approval was granted.
He said that was how quick it took another milestone prostate cancer drug, abiraterone, to be approved.
Patients had shown remarkable advances on enzalutamide, he said.
?They have come in and said, ?I?ve just played a full round of golf, which I haven?t been able to do in two years.?
Prostate cancer
He added: ?It?s a major breakthrough as it offers a treatment option for patients who have few others available.?
Last year his colleague Professor Johann de Bono said its benefits were ?similar to those Herceptin brings for women with late stage breast cancer?.
Dr Attard emphasised EMA approval did not mean it would be available immediately across all the NHS. That has to be determined by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).
However, he said there was a ?strong case? for patients to receive it before then under Cancer Drugs Fund in England.
Prostate cancer kills 10,000 men a year, making it comparable in scale to breast cancer, which kills 12,000 women annually in Britain.
After years of new advances in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer, there is at last a surfeit of good news. Earlier today, Nice confirmed it was recommending abiraterone for treatment on the NHS.
Owen Sharp, chief executive of Prostate Cancer UK, said the charity was ?delighted? at the decision, which only came about after a u-turn from the drugs rationing body.
He said: ?We urge local health authorities in England and Wales to waste no time in putting in place the necessary arrangements to ensure men with advanced prostate cancer can access this drug without delay.?
Source: http://lancastria.net/blog/enzalutamide-and-prostate-cancer.html
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