A three-drug ‘breakthrough’ treatment for aggressive, advanced breast cancer can delay the spread of the disease by twice the time of existing therapies, a trial has found.
Thousands of women could benefit after tests showed the method was more effective than the current NHS offering.
The trial of 325 patients with advanced breast cancer from 28 countries found it could delay disease progression by 15 months compared with 7.3 months.
Researchers have hailed the results as potentially ‘transformative’ for those with PIK3CA-mutated HR+/HER2- breast cancer – a common form of the disease triggered by a mutation on the PIK3CA gene.
Half of the patients in the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, were given the available treatment of palbociclib, a cancer growth blocker, and fulvestrant, a hormone therapy.
The other half were also given new drug inavolisib, which blocks the activity of the PIK3 protein.
After 18 months, 46.2 per cent of patients in the three-drug group showed no signs of disease progression compared with 21.1 per cent of those in the first group.
Lead author Nick Turner, a professor of molecular oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: ‘It is a huge breakthrough that … could represent a transformative advance for people with this type of breast cancer.’
