A colored scanning electron micrograph of a cell of a common type of lung cancer, called non-small cell cancer. A new drug targets the mutated protein that leads to uncontrolled growth. Image Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Source

Health USA23. February 2021

New Drug Gives Hope to Cancer Patients

Researchers have found a way to switch off one of the most common cancer-causing genetic mutations, giving hope to patients suffering from lung cancer, and paving the way to other medications that can fight more treatment-resisting cancers.

The new drug, Sotorasib, produced by the American drugmaker Amgen, effectively attacks the cancer-causing mutation KRAS G12C, when properly combined with other cancer-fighting drugs.

“The more I looked at it, the more optimistic I became,” says Dr. Bruce Johnson, the chief clinical research officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, regarding Amgen’s data on the new drug.

In lung cancer patients who have the mutation, adding the Sotorasib drug to the medication made the tumors shrink considerably and stop growing for seven months, on average. And in three patients out of 126, the drug seems to have completely eradicated cancer. The mutation is also found in colorectal cancer as well as other cancers and is especially dominant in one of the most lethal of them all: pancreatic – which scientists are already finding promising medication for.

Source:
New York Times

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