Lung cancer pill may get second chance after tests

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The lung cancer pill Iressa has shown surprising results for patients with advanced disease where it has been at least as effective as a standard chemotherapy treatment, researchers reported on Thursday.

Patients who got the once-a-day pill made by AstraZeneca lived as long as those given the chemotherapy treatment Sanofi-Aventis' Taxotere or docetaxel, the international team of researchers found.

This is second-line treatment, traditionally offered after a course of combined chemotherapies that can last months and is still considered the best approach to lung cancer.

"The study is the first time in lung cancer that an oral biological agent has been tested head-to-head against chemotherapy," Dr. Edward Kim of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues wrote in the Lancet medical journal.

Kim's team tested 1,466 patients in 24 countries who had completed a first course of standard chemotherapy. Half got Iressa as second-line treatment and half got docetaxel. Both sets of patients lived about as long -- eight months on average.

Dr. Michael Cullen of University Hospital Birmingham in Britain, who wrote a commentary on the findings, noted that Iressa is far less toxic than chemotherapy, including Taxotere, and is very convenient to take.

"I think there will be patients for whom it will be favored," he said.

But he said in a telephone interview tests supposed to show who would do better on so-called targeted therapies like Iressa failed to predict who would benefit from them.