New Cancer Strategy

1994/07/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Medikuntza

A hundred cancer patients will soon start taking a new medicine that will prevent the spread of tumors. The first sessions with 15 patients with abdominal cancer have revealed that the new drug called “batimastat” is quite safe.

Most new cancer therapies target the removal of cancer cells from the body to prevent the recurrence of cancer. Batimastat doesn't work that way. It aims to prevent cancer cells from spreading throughout the body and new sources of cancer are created.

More than 300 patients from hospitals in Great Britain, the US, France and Denmark will be treated through this new drug in order to evaluate its efficacy and safety.

In the first sessions of the drug, 15 patients from the Western General Hospital of Edinburgh were treated, seven of whom responded satisfactorily. All patients had ascites malignant, i.e. painful accumulations of fluids filled with cancer cells in the abdomen. To eliminate pain, doctors should remove the fluid every few days. The 15 patients were injected with the drug batimastat and seven did not accumulate fluid for four months.

Cancer cells need an enzyme that destroys the connective tissue of organs and cells to expand into the body from the original source. Batimastata blocks this enzyme and makes cancer cells within a collagen barrier. As a result, cancer cells cannot leave the original source and spread the disease to the entire body.