The Food and Drug Administration approved a first kind of drug that uses herpes virus to penetrate and destroy deadly skin cancer tumors.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the injectable drug from Amgen Inc. for patients with melanoma that is hard to treat. Knows as the deadliest form of skin cancer, at least 74,000 U.S. patients are expected to be diagnosed with it this year. For now, the drug is only approved for melanoma tumors that cannot be removed surgically.
The newly approved FDA drug Imlygic, is directly injected into tumor tissue herpes is used as a Trojan horse to infiltrate and rupture cancer cells. The drug combines a gene snippet to stimulate the immune system with a mutated version of the herpes simplex virus which is the kind that causes mouth cold sores.
But even with the drug's groundbreaking approach, FDA officials pointed out that it has not been shown to extend life. Company studies showed that approximately 16 percent of patients who were injected with the drug noticed their tumors got smaller, than the 2 percent of patients who took more conventional cancer medications. The effect lasted for at least six months.
Health regulators emphasized that the new drug had no effect on melanoma that had already spread to the brain, lungs or other internal organs. Amgen said patients should be treated for at least 6months using the drug or until there are no tumors left. The company estimates one cycle of treatment will cost about $65,000, depending on the length of treatment.
Doctors give an initial round of injections, followed by a second dose three weeks later and then regular injections every two weeks. The drug known chemically as talimogene laherparepvec or T-VEC splits and imitates the cancer cells repeatedly until the membranes, or outer layers, of the cancer cells burst. Meanwhile, the gene snippet mixes with a protein to influence an immune response to kill melanoma cells in the tumor and in other parts of the body.
Scientists have gone through altering various viruses, including measles and polio, over the years to fight several types of cancer, including brain tumors, breast cancers and others.
