Pfizer confirm anti-tumour activity for Sutent

Pfizer has confirmed that Sutent, its single-agent sunitinib malate, has shown anti-tumour activity in patients with advanced gastric cancer.

The data was taken from a phase II study and presented at this week’s 14th European Cancer Conference (ECCO) in Barcelona.

Results from the study indicate that sunitinib malate displayed anti-tumour activity with tolerable adverse effects in patients with gastric cancer who had previously been treated with chemotherapy.

Yung-Jue Bang, professor of internal medicine at the Seoul National University college of medicine, maintained that gastric cancer remained a significant killer in many parts of the world due to the increased likelihood that it is diagnosed at an advanced stage.

He insisted that effective treatment was essential and that these phase II results were “promising and support an additional study of sunitinib malate in advanced gastric cancer, which typically has a poor prognosis with five-year survival around 25 per cent”.

In June 2007, Pfizer reported an advance of phase III studies of Sutent from breast cancer into tests as a treatment for colorectal, hepatocellular and non-small cell lung cancers.