In light of the results for this study the drugmaker wants now to extend the use of the drug so that patients with lung cancer who had relapse after their initial treatment or have advanced lung cancer could use the drug with brand name Cyramza.
The research study which was led by Dr. Maurice Perol was done at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon in France. There, over 1200 patients with a form of the most common type of lung cancer were selected. One criterion for the selection meant that only those patients that after going to chemotherapy experienced relapse were selected. Some of the patients took placebo while others were given ramucirumab with their chemotherapy drug docetaxel.
The results were concluding: tumor shrinkage was 64% higher in the ramucirumab group ( 23 percent compared to 14 percent). Furthermore, the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug was increased as it took up to 1.5 months longer before patients experienced their relapse from chemotherapy. While this might not seem like much to some, medics believe this is ground-breaking and these signs of progress in lung cancer treatment show this could very well be “the first treatment in approximately a decade to improve the outcome of patients in the second-line setting,” as also research study leader Dr. Maurice Perol said in a conference.
