Drug was developed in Australia.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on Tuesday, approved the use of venetoclax, a cancer drug developed in Australia, for use in the United States, reported Xinhua.
The approval has been granted for outside human trials for patients with chronic lymphotic leukemia (CLL) who have tried at least one other treatment.
Developed in the 1980s in Melbourne, the drug overrides the BCL-2 protein which helps in cancer survival. The importance of BCL-2 was discovered by researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). The drug was made by pharmaceutical company AbbVie
Professor Andrew Roberts, head of clinical translation, WEHI said that the human trial of the drug in 80 of the 116 patients in Melbourne have produced a positive result.
“Most of the patients had failed to be controlled by all the other treatments we had available. This was the last line option for them,” Roberts told News Limited.
“It truly does lead to the disease melting away in 20 percent of people,” Roberts added.
Roberts claimed that venetoclax was the last option for most of the patients as other treatments didn’t produce any result.
One among the patients is Vic Blackwood, 68, whose cancerous lymph nodes had grown to the size of a golf ball and those under his arms had the size of a grapefruit. He underwent the trial for two years and is completely free of cancer.
He was given only three weeks to live and was in bed for about 20 hours a day due to his weak body condition when he started the trial.
“They said if we don’t do anything you’ve got three weeks to live. I was so weak, I was in bed for 20 hours a day,” Blackwood told News Limited.
“The change in me has been more dramatic than in anyone else. I can do anything now. It saved my life,” he said.
The European drug regulators are also considering the use of venetoclax for cancer treatment. The medicine is likely to be registered in Australia soon. Andrew Roberts hopes that the Australian authorities will also give the nod to use the drug in the country.
However, the government will have to support the users of the medicine in the form of subsidy as overseas users cost around US$100,000 a year.
Experiments are going on in Australia to increase the survival rates by using the medicine with other anti-cancer drugs.