Bristol Drug Seen Helping Body Attack Lung Cancer: Health

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-30/bristol-drug-seen-helping-body-attack-lung-cancer-health.html

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY) is making progress developing a new drug to assist the body’s immune system in its ability to find and attack cancer cells. The drug may prove especially effective fighting lung cancer.

Bristol-Myers, the farthest along of at least five companies pushing ahead with this cancer-targeting approach, received U.S. approval in March 2011 on a drug that attacks melanoma by unleashing the body’s T-cells to fend off the cancer. Now, early tests on a Bristol-Myers therapy affecting a different immune-system lever is showing promise against advanced lung tumors, tied to more than a quarter of U.S. cancer deaths yearly, as well as other deadly malignancies.

“This could be a breakthrough for lung cancer,” said Julie Brahmer, an oncologist at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore.

In an initial trial of 240 patients, the Bristol-Myers drug, known as BMS-936558, shrunk tumors in 24 of 95 melanoma patients, 10 of 33 people with kidney cancer and 13 of 75 of those with advanced lung cancer, according to preliminary information on the data, gathered in the first phase of tests usually needed for regulatory approval.