Drug May Reduce Breast Cancer Recurrence

Clinical data presented at a conference on breast cancer in St. Gallen, Switzerland, shows that letrozole -- which currently has U.S. approval for use after women finish a lengthy course of the current drug, tamoxifen -- reduces the risk the risk of cancer returning or spreading to other parts of the body. "It's a big improvement in treatment," said Dr. Andrew Wardley, who ran the clinical trials in Great Britain. "This drug's improving by nearly 20 percent on what was a very good start. They're stopping people getting recurrences of breast cancer."

In a telephone interview from St. Gallen, Wardley told The Associated Press that because two sets of clinical trials have now been carried out on letrozole for this use, it could get approval in just six months.

Letrozole, which Novartis sells under the name Femara, is the second of a new type of drugs that are proving effective in treating breast cancer immediately after an operation.

Last month, cancer specialists at a Dec. 8 meeting in Texas reported that AstraZeneca's Arimidex far more breast cancers from recurring in older women than the old standby tamoxifen, also with far fewer side effects. The results were also published online by the British medical journal The Lancet.

Tamoxifen -- a generic drug -- works by stopping estrogen from connecting to cells.

So-called aromatase inhibitors prevent estrogen from being made in the first place, and don't raise the risk of blood clots and endometrial cancer as tamoxifen does. The third drug of this type is Pfizer Inc.'s Aromasin.

None of the studies change tamoxifen's status as the drug of choice for women who get breast cancer before menopause, because the newer drugs aren't thought to be effective then.

Tamoxifen revolutionized breast cancer treatment when it came into use some three decades ago and studies showed it could cut recurrence risk in half. It blunts the effects of estrogen, a hormone that promotes the growth of about three-fourths of the tumors that occur in postmenopausal women.

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