Hope for new cancer drug combos

A massive analysis of cancer drugs has thrown up several new combinations that might improve treatments, a European conference heard today.

Some 300,000 experiments have been conducted on the 100 drugs approved for cancer treatment in the USA, researchers said.

The experiments have involved 5,000 combinations of drugs, tested on 60 cell lines.

The work was revealed to cancer specialists meeting in Dublin, Ireland, for the EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.

The researchers have begun testing promising combinations on laboratory mice – and some of these seem to be more effective than single drugs, according to researcher Dr Susan Holbeck, of the US National Cancer Institute.

She said: "The goal is to identify novel drug combinations that are more active than the single agents alone. Since these are all approved agents, there is the potential to rapidly translate these combinations into the clinic.

"In addition, there are a large number of drug combinations that have never been used together in people, and for which there is no experimental information on whether there might a benefit to the combination."

Symposium chair Professor Stefan Sleijfer, of the Erasmus University Medical Centre, The Netherlands, said: "This study is interesting because of the use of combinations of drugs already approved and on the market, which were tested in cell lines that have been well characterised in terms of genetic profiles.

"If confirmed, this study will form a basis for future clinical trials on such combinations in well-defined patient groups."

* A second study at the conference reports on a new antibody treatment, RG7212.

The treatment targets solid tumours and first results from human patients have been encouraging, according to Danish researchers.

One patient with advanced melanoma has been under treatment for 30 weeks without serious side-effects – and has experienced shrinkage of the cancer, according to Dr Ulrik Lassen, head of the oncology phase I unit at the Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark.