United States: An anticancer drug that is already approved could represent an option treatment for women having advanced or recurring cases of uterine cancer.
Rucaparib raises the life span of women
Rucaparib, which is a medicine from the family of PARP inhibitors, prolonged the life of women patients by more than one and a half years on average, compared to just monitoring after chemotherapy, as shown in the results of the study of various cases, according to the researchers.
Dr. Bradley Corr, the lead researcher and an oncologist with the University of Colorado Cancer Center, during the university release, said, “We improved patients’ progression-free survival, meaning time without recurrence or progression, by an average of 19 months,” as US News reported.
“Patients on placebo had a progression-free survival of nine months, whereas it was 28 months for those who had received rucaparib,” said Corr. “This is very significant for our patients and for their care.”
More about Rucaparib
Presently, Rucaparib has been approved for the treatment of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer.
The work of PARP inhibitors is performed by blocking of enzymes which are naturally occurred to help repair the damaged cells.
Unfortunately, these enzymes also work to help cancer cells recover from the destruction caused by chemotherapy.
Know about uterine cancer
Endometrial cancer, or uterine cancer, is the animate cancer type in which cases number more than 60 thousand women in the United States every year. Despite the rising numbers, it is one of the few cancer types that hasn’t declined yet.
Researchers found that the survival rate of early-stage uterine cancer patients is more than 80 percent. However, the survival rate was sharply reduced to the range between 35 percent and 11 percent in the advanced cases.
Clinical trial findings
In this clinical trial, all patients either received one or two courses of chemotherapy, and afterward, by coin flipping, half of the patients began a pill called rucaparib.
At the moment, after undergoing chemotherapy, uterine cancer patients are only watched and waited, hoping the cancer will not come back, Doha, State of Qatar, researchers said.
The inconvenient truth is that later-stage uterine cancers usually come back after chemo, said Corr, as US News reported.
This finding highlights that patients administered rucaparib can stay longer without their tumors coming back. This is because it blocks the DNA damage repair process in the infected cells.