New drug may help women with hereditary breast cancer

New drug may help women with hereditary breast cancer

A small clinical trial of a new drug designed to treat hereditary breast cancer has achieved promising results, UK scientists have said.

The scientists recruited 54 women from the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, all of whom had previously received chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer, and who carried faulty copies of the BRCA1 or 2 genes.

Half of the patients were given 100mg doses of a new drug called olaparib, while the other half received 400mg doses of the drug.

The results of the trial, which involved drug company AstraZeneca, were presented at a conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Florida. They showed that over 40 per cent of tumours among women treated with the higher dose shrunk by a significant amount, with one patient's tumour disappearing completely. The women's tumours stopped growing for an average of around six months and the majority only reported minor side-effects such as fatigue and nausea.

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