British Scientists Develop New Drug to Treat Aggressive Cancer

Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a “truly wonderful” new drug for a hard-to-treat and aggressive form of cancer.

The researchers at the Queen Mary University London declared that their new treatment “quadrupled” three-year survival rates and increased average survival by 1.6 months of cancer patients, reported The Guardian.

The new drug cuts off the tumour’s food supply in Mesothelioma type of cancer. The results related to the test of this new cancer drug were published in the journal JAMA Oncology.

Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that occurs in the lungs because of exposure to asbestos at work. It is deadly with one of the world’s worst cancer survival rates.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London conducted an international trial of their drug in the US, the UK, Australia, Italy and Taiwan.

It was found that those patients, who received the new drug named pegargiminase and chemotherapy survived for an average of 9.3 months, compared to 7.7 months for those who had the placebo and chemotherapy, states the study.

According to the researchers, this is the first successful combination of chemotherapy with a drug that targets cancer’s metabolism developed for this disease in 20 years. The new drug works by depleting arginine levels in the bloodstream. For tumour cells that cannot manufacture their own arginine, this means their growth is thwarted.