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Breast Cancer Drugs from Pfizer and Lill...

New drugs help fight breast cancerExperimental breast cancer drugs from Pfizer and Eli Lilly slowed or halted growth of advanced tumors in studies, potentially adding a new treatment option for patients and top-selling therapies for the companies.

Pfizer’s palbociclib doubled to 20.2 months the time in which patients’ advanced breast cancer didn’t progress, the drugmaker said today. In an unrelated study, Lilly’s drug, bemaciclib, aided 61 percent of patients with metastatic, hormone-sensitive breast cancer, meaning the size of their tumors shrunk by 30 percent or didn’t increase for 24 weeks.

Prolia Is approved by the FDA to strengt...

Prolia Is approved by the FDA to strengthen bones of some cancer patients

Prolia approved for bone strengthening in cancer patientsThe FDA has approved the osteoporosis drug Prolia as a treatment for some breast and prostate cancer patients whose bones have been weakened by certain hormone therapies for cancer.

The drug’s manufacturer, Amgen Inc., says studies showed that Prolia improved bone mass and reduced the occurrence of new spine fractures in men with prostate cancer receiving androgen deprivation therapy and who did not have cancer spread to the bone. It also increased bone mass in women being treated with aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer.

The company says in a news release that Prolia is the “first-and-only” therapy approved by the FDA for cancer treatment bone loss in patients who have undergone hormone therapy.