A new drug is offering fresh hope for people with advanced prostate cancer, as early results of its trial showed it can prolong survival significantly.
Patients who were given the new drug called Radium-223 Chloride — known as Alpharadin TM — found that it eased pain and caused only minor side effects.
It was found targeting tumours accurately using alpha radiation, which doctors conducting the study said is the most effective form of radiation to eliminate cancer because it limits damage to surrounding tissue.
“It’s more damaging. It takes one, two, three hits to kill a cancer cell compared with thousands of hits for beta particles,” Dr Chris Parker, who led the trial at the Royal Marsden Hospital, was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.
The doctors also said the drug will also do less damage to surrounding tissue because it accurately targets calls.
Speaking at the 2011 European Multidiscip-linary Cancer Congress in Stockholm, Dr Parker said: “They have such a tiny range, a few millionths of a metre. So we can be sure that the damage is being done where it should be.”
Patients taking the drug has a 30 per cent lower rate of death compared top patients taking a placebo pill. “It would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment
to those taking placebo,” Dr Parker said.
Radium-223 has “a completely different safety profile” to chemotherapy, he added.
Prof Gillies McKenna, Cancer Research UK’s radiotherapy expert said: “This appears to be an important study using a highly targeted form of radiation to treat prostate cancer that has spread to the bones.