New Drug Fights Two Cancers
Reported November 22, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — The experimental drug phenoxodiol shows promise in fighting cancers of the prostate and cervix, according to two new studies.
The first study is from Yale University’s School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. Researchers recruited women with squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix, vagina or vulva. Study participants took two different doses of phenoxodiol for 21 days to 28 days between the time of diagnosis and surgery. Five patients of the six patients in the 50-milligram-dose group had stable disease at the time of surgery. In the 200-milligram dose group, all eight patients had stable disease.
“These data with cervical cancer provide evidence that orally administered phenoxodiol has a significant anti-tumor effect, particularly in the case of squamous cell carcinomas, which are relatively insensitive to standard anti-cancer drugs,” says Professor Graham Kelly, Phenoxodiol Program Manager for Marshall Edwards, Inc.
In the second study investigators found phenoxodiol significantly delays tumor progression in men with late-stage hormone refractory prostate cancer. The trial was designed to last 24 weeks but was extended to 90 weeks because of the unexpected extended survival in some patients.
“The two highest dosages of phenoxodiol provided a significant anti-tumor response in a disease that is normally unresponsive to treatment in the late stages,” says Robert Davies, M.D., lead investigator of the study and urologist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia. “We found that the PSA level, an indicator of the level of cancer, decreased. We also saw a clinical response that was prolonged in some patients.”
Results from both studies show promise that phenoxodiol may be a new way to treat these difficult cancers.
SOURCE: International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer in Philadelphia, Nov. 14 – Nov. 18, 2005