Lung Cancer Drug, Shows Big Promise In Early Tests

CHICAGO — It's way too soon to declare success, but an experimental drug for lung cancer patients with a certain gene showed extraordinary promise in early testing, doctors reported at a cancer conference on Saturday.

More than 90 percent of the 82 patients in a study saw their tumors shrink after two months on the drug, Pfizer Inc.'s crizotinib, (crih-ZAH-tin-ib), researchers reported.

Doctors had expected only about 10 percent of these very sick patients to respond to the drug, according to one of the study's leaders, Dr. Yung-Jue Bang of the Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea.

These were people with advanced disease, including some whose cancers had spread to the brain. They had already tried an average of three other drugs. Responses to crizotinib have lasted up to 15 months so far, and the drug has been rushed into late-stage testing, Bang said.

Many leading cancer specialists, who normally don't get excited until a drug proves effective in large studies against existing treatments, said the research so far on crizotinib was promising.

"It's early, but I'm impressed by it. It looks extremely effective," said Dr. Roy Herbst, lung cancer chief at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He has consulted for makers of other lung cancer drugs but not this one.

Dr. Alice Shaw, the Massachusetts General Hospital doctor who is leading a larger study of crizotinib, agreed.