Bristol Melanoma Drug Extends Survival In Study

March 22, 2011 - PRLog -- The details of how long patients who have suffered life-threatening skin cancer experienced after taking the drug promising Bristol will be announced at a major medical meeting in June.

Bristol-Myers rose 4.3 percent to $ 27.10 in electronic trading of their near New York Stock Exchange at $ 26. First jumped 5.7 percent after news of successful clinical trials were reported.

Expansion of overall survival - the primary purpose of the study - considered the gold standard for testing drugs against cancer.

For more details and a preview look here:
http://www.knowthecancer.com/bristol-melanoma-drug-extends-survival-in-study

U.S. health regulators ipilimumab is expected to approve this week the results of various studies in patients who had previously received treatment of advanced melanoma.

In this study, Bristol-Myers drug extended survival to an average of four months, which was seen as a significant step forward full of drugs against the disease, which are not really effective treatment options.

The Food and Drug Administration in November, has delayed its approval decision to give him more time to review the data on medicine to fix a new date of March 26 action.

"Ipilimumab is an interesting product, especially given the lack of effective treatments for this bad form of cancer," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson in a research note.

Advanced melanoma is one of the worst types of cancer and can spread rapidly from the skin to internal organs like the brain. Once melanoma spreads to other organs of the median survival is usually only six to nine months.

Phase III study in previously untreated patients compared Ipilimumab in combination with chemotherapy against chemotherapy alone.

Patients in the Phase III or stage IV melanoma, Stage IV are the most advanced form of the disease.

"If the results are primarily weapons, then the drug would probably provide a significant survival benefit of two years compared with monotherapy and will presumably a smaller proportion of patients (15 percent of the class) have quasi-cure, in response, said Anderson, who forecast sales worldwide ipilimumab $ 1.7 billion in 2015.

The promise of Ipilimumab has created new hope for desperately sick, many of the earlier study has survived well beyond the average of four months. At the time these results were announced in June last year, more than 20 percent of those who took the drug were alive after two years.

A consensus forecast of four analysts compiled by Thomson Reuters calls for Ipilimumab sales reached about 820 million U.S. dollars in 2015.

# # #

Know The Cancer is a topic to gives facts causes cancers. This may elaborate different types of cancers; it gives details throughout the whole system either for men or women: http://www.knowthecancer.com