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Study: Drug cocktail for advanced breast cancer can extend life up to 16 months

"We’ve never seen anything like this before," said Dr. Sandra M. Swain, an oncologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C.

By Brooks Hays
New Roche cancer drug, Perjeta, extended the lives of women facing aggressive breast cancer by roughly 16 months in a recent study. (CC/Roche)
New Roche cancer drug, Perjeta, extended the lives of women facing aggressive breast cancer by roughly 16 months in a recent study. (CC/Roche)

MADRID, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- A new breast cancer drug by Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche has delivered unprecedented results in recent clinical trials, extending the lives of women fighting an aggressive type of breast cancer by an average of 16 months.

The drug, Perjeta, was tested on 808 women from all over the world with late-stage metastatic breast cancer. Half the patients took a regimen of cancer drugs, including Perjeta, Herceptin and the chemotherapy drug docetaxel. The other half, the control group, took Herceptin, docetaxel and a placebo instead of Perjeta. The first group survived an average of 56.5 months, or about 4.5 years -- 15.7 months longer than the control group.

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It's one of the most impressive clinical trial results ever posted by a late-stage cancer drug. Even the most promising new drugs have previously only extended survival by a few months.

"Adding Perjeta to treatment with Herceptin and chemotherapy resulted in the longest survival observed to date in a clinical study of people with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer," Dr. Sandra Horning, Roche's chief medical officer and head of global product development, said in a statement.

"We've never seen anything like this before," Dr. Sandra M. Swain, an oncologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C., told The New York Times. Swain led the new Perjeta study, and was in Madrid on Sunday to present the drug trial's results at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology. "It's really unprecedented to have this survival benefit."

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Perjeta has been approved by the FDA and is a standard of treatment for women battling metastatic breast cancer, but still only half of the women eligible for the drug are taking it. But the latest research results are likely to see the number of Perjeta users rise quickly.

However priceless those 16 months might be for women facing aggressive and previously untreated breast cancer, the drugs will be expensive. In the United States, Perjeta costs $5,900 a month, while Herceptin -- the drug Perjeta is meant to be paired with -- runs $5,300 a month.

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