A second-stage test in Austria has shown surprising results in the treatment of brain cancer with a new drug that “significantly” shrinks metastases in about three out of four cases. “I’m very excited about the results,” Matthias Preusser, professor of oncology, told IFL Science.
Preusser is a co-author of a new paper published last week in the journal Nature Medicine describing the trial’s success. The study followed 15 patients (14 women and one man) who were treated for positive breast cancer that had metastasized to the brain.
The key to the trial was the drug trastuzumab deruxtecan, a relatively new drug that has been available for less than a year in most parts of the world. Preusser explained that they used the drug known as an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) and produced a type of targeted drug consisting of a monoclonal antibody and a cancer-killing agent chemically linked together.
The antibody binds the drug to the cancer cells, which then engulf the ADC. Chemotherapy is released into the tumor cell and the cancer is killed.
Trastuzumab deruxtecan has previously been shown to treat HER2-positive breast cancer quite effectively, but the new trial wanted to see if it could provide the same benefits for cancer in the brain.
“We found that brain metastases were significantly reduced in 11 of the 15 patients, thus providing a 73.3 percent response rate in the brain,” Preusser said. “I hope we will see improved treatment possibilities for brain cancers using ADCs.”
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