Washington: An experimental cancer drug made by Pfizer has shown signs of promise at slowing the spread of advanced breast cancer, researchers said.
The drug, called palbociclib, when administered with another anti-cancer drug already on the market, letrozole, stopped cancer progression for a median of 20 months.
That was double the amount of time seen in a control group of patients who did not receive palbociclib.
However, those on the two drugs survived an average of four months longer (37.5 months versus 33.3 months), which was not a statistically significant gain, the researchers noted.
More research is ongoing to measure the potential impact of the drug as a treatment for estrogen receptor positive and HER2 negative breast cancer.
The findings of the phase II trial, which included 165 women, were released yesterday at the American Association of Cancer Research in San Diego, California.
