Anticancer Drug Does Not Accelerate Tumor Growth After Treatment Ends: Findings

Concerns that tumors may grow faster after the anticancer drug sunitinib is discontinued were raised by studies on animals. Despite this oncologists and physicists who collaborated to analyze data from the largest study of patients with kidney cancer convincingly demonstrate that such tumor acceleration does not occur in humans. The findings, publishing online on February 7th in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports, suggest that sunitinib does not cause lingering risks for patients after their treatment ends. "We were able to demonstrate that this applied across all patients and that those who had the greatest benefit from the drug while it was administered retained this benefit," says senior author Dr. Tito Fojo, of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

Sunitinib, which is approved around the world for the treatment of several different cancers, works by targeting proteins on the blood vessels that feed tumors. Animal studies have suggested that treatment with sunitinib may induce changes in tumor vessels or adaptations within tumors themselves that could promote cancer growth and spread.

Source-Eurekalert