10 November : The debacle of Eli Lily’s therapeutic products has continued further with the latest being the failure of its combination remedial approach to cure nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The drug proved futile in delivering better overall survival chance in cancer patients in their phase III clinical studies.
The investigative study was initiated with the view to determine the effective and potent remedial measure for treatment of cancer that included Eli Lilly’s Alimta in combination with Roche’s Avastin and chemotherapy to that of the treatment option including Avastin and chemotherapy.
It has been found that Alimta combination resulted in an increased rate of progression free survival in its initial studies, but it failed awfully with its counter group; when the overall survival rate of the cancer patients was taken into account.
The median overall survival chances obtained by this combination was 12.6 months, which was far less than that observed in patients with paclitexal treatment that showed 13.4 months.
Senior clinical director of Oncology department of Eli Lilly, Allen S. Melemed said that the results obtained in Phase II clinical trial study were very promising and so were looking at an increased improvement in the survival rate of cancer patients, but the results disappointed then totally.
Although, Point break study showed an improvement in the progression free survival but it failed to translate those clinical outcomes into an overall survival.
Finn is a Medical Student and a freelancer who is specialized in writing. He is associate with many Pharmacies for whom he writes news based on generic drugs and general health related issues.
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