AstraZeneca’s investigational cancer drug ‘produces stable disease’

New clinical results for an investigational therapy for solid tumours have been released by Array Biopharma.

The company’s AZD6244 drug is an MEK enzyme inhibitor, meaning that it is designed to block a type of enzyme pathway responsible for cell survival and proliferation that is activated in various types of cancer.

Array Biopharma has licensed the drug to AstraZeneca and yesterday revealed that AZD6244 was successful in reducing the pERK protein, a cell signalling protein, by 77 per cent in a preliminary trial involving 34 patients with solid tumours.

Furthermore, another protein, Ki-67, a cell proliferation marker, was reduced in nine out 20 patients, of which five demonstrated a decrease of more than 50 per cent.

Professor Adjei, chair of the department of medicine at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, explained: “This drug shows initial promising results. It appears to be able to target cancers with over-activation of MEK and associated cell signalling pathways in an efficient manner.”

He added that the oral formulation of the drug made it easy to administer to patients, meaning that phase II trials have now been started for patients with a variety of cancers, including melanoma, pancreatic, colonic and lung cancer.

AstraZeneca has been working with Array Biopharma since 2003, when the UK’s second-largest pharmaceutical company agreed to acquire exclusive worldwide rights to AZD6244, as well as other second-generation compounds for oncology purposes.