New Cabazitaxel Drug Improves Life Expectancy in Advanced Prostate Cancer Patients

A new-fangled chemotherapy drug, cabazitaxel by Sanofi-Aventis, shows potential in improving life expectancy among men having advanced prostate cancer, as a final recourse in a clinical study.

Men, in whom cancer had metastasized beyond the prostate gland, generally undergo treatment with medications intended on reducing testosterone being produced in the body, a hormone which believed to be feeding cancer spread. However, when such treatment is unsuccessful, then the sole accepted choice presently is Taxotere, a chemotherapy drug that has frequently been observed to not succeed.

Cabazitaxel was tested during a large-scaled study involving 755 males from twenty-six countries having cancer in a continual state of progression in spite of being administered Taxotere. In that study, half of those men who were administered cabazitaxel (intravenous administration in three weekly interval) survived a median of over fifteen months in comparison to the around thirteen months in those males who were given mitoxantrone, another cancer medication, a disparity which was statistically noteworthy. In the course of the 5-year-lasting study, those men administered cabazitaxel had a thirty percent lesser likelihood of dying as compared to those men that were not administered the drug and stayed free from cancer for lengthier time spans.

Despite mitoxantrone not having garnered approval for being used to treat advanced prostate cancer, yet investigators from the study deemed it would be fairer to evaluate the new-fangled drug against an active cancer drug instead of a placebo. During the study, all entrants additionally received prednisone (a steroid), was backed by Sanofi-Aventis.

Researchers believe that being able to live an additional 2-3 months may not reverberate like a significant time, however men with advanced prostate cancer actually face a dearth of any viable choices. The life expectancy of such males is just a year’s time. Cabazitaxel was noted to have increased the number of males that survived for a minimal of two years by over two folds. This latest advancement is believed to be beneficial to nearly twenty thousand males in the United States annually.

How Cabazitaxel helps fight Prostate Cancer?

Cabazitaxel is a chemically altered version of the chemotherapy medication Taxotere, a final route that also ultimately falls short as the prostate cancer cells are believed to have pumped out the medication prior to it being able to wield any outcomes. However, the prostate cancer cells are unable to identify cabazitaxel which enables the medication to gain entry and effectually obliterate the prostate cancer cells.

However, main side effect linked with cabazitaxel was fever linked with plummet in infection-combating white blood cell count found to affect 7.5 percent of the males, which the researchers believe, needs to be warily observed. Additionally, six percent of the males that received the new drug were observed to feel severely nauseous and five percent of them ailed from acute weariness.

On the basis of the study outcomes, Sanofi-Aventis is planning on applying for the FDA nod of the drug. There are also plans involving trials for analysing men in the early staging prostate cancer.