‘Striking’ new treatment for deadly prostate cancer could increase life expectancy
New drug combination could delay cancer
- New research has found that a combination of drugs, including niraparib, could delay the advancement of a deadly form of prostate cancer.
- The study, involving 696 men across 32 countries, showed the new drug combination reduced the risk of cancer growth by 37 per cent overall, and by 48 per cent in a subgroup of patients with specific genetic mutations.
- Medics also observed that the time until symptoms worsened was twice as long for patients receiving niraparib, decreasing the number of patients with notable symptom worsening from 34 per cent to 16 per cent.
- Professor Gerhardt Attard, who led the study, emphasised the need for widespread genomic testing to identify patients with homologous recombination repair (HRR) gene mutations who would benefit most.
- Niraparib is currently approved in the UK for treating some types of cancer, but has not yet received approval for prostate cancer.