Breast cancer patients whose tumours have been treated by chemotherapy but remain too large to be removed by surgery have been offered new hope. Doctors at Singapore’s National Cancer Institute say taking the drug sunitinib a week before chemotherapy begins can shrink the tumour sufficiently so that it could be safely removed by surgery.
The Singapore doctors carried out a trial using 24 patients that revealed this new combination of treatment was able to shrink tumours by a quarter after just one cycle of chemotherapy. The tumours in those patients who only received chemotherapy saw minimal reduction after one cycle of chemo – it can take up to four treatments and often include radiotherapy too to reduce a tumour sufficiently for surgery.
All the patients taking part in the study, which began in 2010, had advanced breast cancer, their tumours on average measuring 8cm.
Sunitinib is more typically used to treat renal or kidney cancer but, along with breast cancer, it is being considered for use to combat melanoma, bladder cancer and mesothelioma. The drug works to destroy the vessels that supply blood to cancerous tumours and blood cells and when combined with chemotherapy, it makes for a more effective way of reducing a tumour.
The Singapore study involved giving patients a daily dose of 12.5mg of sunitinib one week before chemo. Of those patients who followed that drug regimen, 9% showed no traces of cancer after four cycles of chemo. There was no replication of those results in any of the patients who only had four cycles of chemo.
With the tumour drastically reduced in size, the chances of successful surgery to remove the cancerous growth are much higher.
The Singapore team presented the results of their study at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2012.
While sunitinib is known to work successfully in reducing cancerous growths, the drug does have known side effects, such as nausea and diarrhoea. However, the Singapore team reported that their patients did not typically present with those side effects.
More clinical trials into the drug’s effectiveness in treating breast cancer are now planned, both in Singapore and elsewhere.
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