New pill could offer hope to bowel cancer and gastrointestinal
stromal tumor patients after failure of standard
treatmenNovember 21st, 2012 in Cancer Two phase 3 trials,
published in The Lancet, have shown that a novel oral drug
called regorafenib could offer survival benefits to people with
bowel cancer or gastrointestinal stromal tumor following failure
of existing treatments. Globally, nearly 1.25 million people are
diagnosed with bowel cancer every year, and in at least 50% of
patients the cancer spreads to other parts of their body (which
doctors refer to as the cancer becoming metastatic). Metastatic
bowel cancer tends not to be treatable by surgery, and although
there are a number of existing drugs which can be used to treat
the cancer, resistance develops eventually to all therapies, and
patients then have poor prognosis. Gastrointestinal stromal
tumours (GISTs) belong to a type of cancer known as soft tissue
sarcomas, and although they are relatively rare, there are
thought to be at least 8000 new ca