• 6/6/2006
  • New York, NY
  • staff
  • Bloomberg.com

Patients with inoperable head and neck cancers are more likely to be cured if they are given Sanofi-Aventis SA’s best-selling cancer drug Taxotere in addition to chemotherapy, a new study shows.

The combination represents a new standard of care for patients with the disease, which historically has had a low survival rate, said Marshall R. Posner, director of head and neck oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Overall survival after three years was 62 percent with patients who received Taxotere, compared with 48 percent for those who didn’t.

The cancer typically doesn’t reappear in patients more than two years after treatment, he said. The number of patients developing the cancer, however, is on the rise.

“We’ve doubled the cure rate” since the 1970s and 1980s, Posner said in an interview at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Atlanta, where he presented the results. “The standard has changed. This survival data can’t be ignored.”

Taxotere was added to two generic chemotherapy medicines only at the start of therapy for patients with advanced cancer of the larynx, pharynx, tongue, palate or jaw. Another group in the 538-patient study was given only the chemotherapy drugs. All then received a combination of chemotherapy and radiation.

Survival from the cancers that strike about 40,000 Americans each year has historically been low, with about 7,400 deaths annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

The researchers were able to reduce the intensity of the chemotherapy in the study when Taxotere was added to their treatment. As a result, those getting the three drug combination experienced fewer side effects, Posner said.

The Taxotere combination “is the platform for curative therapies to which new, molecularly targeted therapies should be added,” he said.

Already doctors are using Erbitux, from ImClone Systems Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., both based in New York, and Avastin, made by South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc., for patients with the disease.