The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a skin cancer drug that can give hope to skin cancer patients with an aggressive form of the disease.
The drug, currently called vismodegib, was first tested at Scottsdale Healthcare's Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center in partnership with Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) of Phoenix. The drug was developed by Roche, and will be marketed by Genentech, a biopharmaceutical research and marketing company in San Francisco.
Vismodegib, which will be marketed as Erivedge, slowed tumor growth in Piper Center patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma. The cancer in these patients had metastazied (spread) to other parts of the body, making them ineligible for radiation treatment or surgery.
Vismodegib blocks the Hedgehog Pathway, a kind of cellular signalling path, and interrupts the flow of information to cancer cells, which prevents their growth and developent. The clinical trials at the Piper Center showed that it caused tumors to shrink in 43% of patients with advanced basal cell cancer. It shrunk tumors in 30% of patients whose cancers had metastasized.
Patients also reported improvements in their symptoms. Prior to taking the drug, the conditions of some had progressed to life-threatening, according to Glen Weiss, MD, who directs thoracic oncology at the Piper Center and is a clinical associate professor at TGen.
“Until now, we did not have any treatments that can effectively slow the tumor growth in these patients with advanced skin cancer,” said Daniel Von Hoff, MD, lead investigator for the trial. Von Hoff is physician-in-chief at TGen and chief scientific officer at the Piper Cancer. "This new drug represents an opportunity to improve quality of life for these patients,” Dr. Weiss says.
Arizona was a logical venue to test vismodegib. The state has one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world. Two million new cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year. Most can be treated fairly easily, but some develop into aggressive, deadly forms and do not respond to surgery or radiation.
The FDA approved vismodegib after only five years in trials, about half the average length for most cancer treatments.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Erivedge will cost about $7,500 per month. It will be sold in capsule form. Genentech says most patients will take the drug for 10 months.
Persons interested in receiving information participating in clinical trials should contact Piper's cancer care coordinator at 480-323-1339; toll free at 1-877-273-3713, or via email.
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