A Spark Of Good News For Precision Oncology In Breast Cancer

Last June, I almost wrote about a drug called AZD5363. It’s an AKT inhibitor, the sort of chemical we studied to see if it killed cancer cells in the lab, years ago. I was intrigued by an ASCO abstract: in an AstraZeneca-sponsored trial of metastatic triple-negative breast cancer this pill significantly extended patients’ overall survival from 12.6 to 19.1 months, vs. placebo, when given with standard paclitaxel chemotherapy.

This potentially big finding—that an AKT inhibitor extends survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer—got lost amid news about giving less treatment for early-stage disease. It turns out, results from the LOTUS trial of a similar drug, Genentech’s AKT inhibitor ipatasertib, were presented too; there was a trend for prolongation of overall survival.

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(GETTY)