WOMEN with advanced lung cancer could benefit from a one-a-day pill, experts said yesterday.
Early results from a clinical trial suggest the drug Tarceva, which is also used to treat pancreatic cancer, extends life and is most effective in women.
Patients were too ill to receive chemotherapy and were given Tarceva as a first-line treatment.
Tarceva is only licensed in the UK as a second-line treatment after chemotherapy.
In the latest study, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago, 15% of women given Tarceva were alive and had no progression of their cancer 12 months after taking the drug, compared with only 5% of women taking a placebo.
According to Cancer Research UK, which ran the trial, almost half of the 39,750 lung cancer patients in the UK fall into the category of being too ill for chemotherapy.
