Astra's cancer drug Iressa helps Asian non-smokers

LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca's cancer drug Iressa should be considered as a first-line therapy for non-smoking Asian patients who develop a common type of lung cancer, researchers said on Monday.

Iressa was once viewed as a likely blockbuster for AstraZeneca but a 2004 study showed that it only helped a small proportion of lung cancer patients. It is sold mainly in Asia and worldwide sales in the first half totalled $125 million.

Asia has a relatively high number of lung cancer patients who are non-smokers, a significant proportion of whom develop a form of cancer known as adenocarcinoma.

For these patients, Iressa should be considered as first-line treatment, rather than being reserved for use only after standard chemotherapy has failed, according to Tony Mok of the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

He presented results of a 22-month study involving more than 1,200 non-smoking lung cancer patients who had never received chemotherapy to the annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Stockholm.

The results showed that Iressa was better tolerated and resulted in a greater likelihood of response than a conventional chemotherapy regimen of carboplatin and paclitaxel.

Iressa, known generically as gefitinib, is in a class of drugs known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors.