Pazopanib

In recent times, a drug called Pazopanib has been approved for the treatment of kidney cancer by the US FDA. In the US, the drug is being traded under the name Votrient.

GlaxoSmithKline is credited with developing Pazopanib. The drug, which is administered orally in pill form, received formal approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating advanced kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma) in October 2009.

In the United States, almost 59,000 people are diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinmoa (RCC) each year which is the most common type of kidney cancer. People sometimes refer to the condition as Conventional RCC or clear cell RCC. This illness is to blame for 85% of all kidney cancers and kills more than 13,000 Americans annually. Research suggests that people who's ancestry go back to northern Europe or Africa are slightly more resistant to the disease. The mean age for contracting the condition is 64 and is twice as common in men as it is in women. In this country, renal cell cancer is the 10th leading reason of death by cancer in adult males.

Research has shown that there are lots of risk factors that will increase the pace of the development of the disease but the cause is yet to be found. When it is just starting out, canerous cells will infect the inner lining of the tinier tubules directly within your kidney. After initial infections, these cancerous cells will rapidy reproduce and create a mass of cancerous cells called a tumor that will actually rob the surrounding tissue of the body's resources. It is also known that the cells in the kidney can break off from the primary tumor and spread through the lymph nodes or bloodstream. There are many places that these celss can end up such as the pancreas or colon but the most common locations are the lungs and liver. Survival depends to a great extent on how early on the cancerous state is detected and the amount of metastasis.

Pazopanib's FDA approval was allowed after an extensive international tryout of the drug to test kidney cancer survival rates amongs other things. For this type of trial, the key is to have the drugs administered to a selection of patients and a placebo to others but make sure that neither know what they are receiving. A randomized trial ascribes patients from the eligible pool (for each leg of a study) to the placebo or treatment group on a random basis – it is intended to drop the chances of subjective bias being introduced to the trial.

For the purpose of this particular test two seperate groups of people were selected; one group who had previously been treated with cytokine therapy and a second who had not been treated by cytokine therapy. This study consisted of 435 patients in number; of that figure a total of 290 patients received the drug and 190 of them were issued a placebo. The study calculated the whether the cancer patients got worse (specificaly the length of time during or after treatment that a patient’s disease does not worsen). The results clearly showed that disregarding of whether or not the test subject had been treated with cytokine therapy before hand, the test subjects who had received pazopanib had a PFS of 9.2 months whereas those who had received the placebo had 4.2 months. Sadly, 40% of the patients involved in the trial passed away by the time the testing had ended. Nevertheless, the response rate (the ratio that showed a partial or a total remission of their cancer) for patients treated with pazopanib was 30%. This number dropped to 3% for patients who were treated with the placebo. The scienties were eager to find the "duration of response" in this trial, or how long the cancerous tumor shrank for before it started growing again. They established this time as just over a year at 13.5 months.

One phenomenon that was noticed among the two groups is that they suffered different side effects to the treatments. These effects varied from patient to patient but included reactions such as diarrhea, elevated blood pressure, abmormal liver function and an over abundance of protein in the patient's urine. When these patients were cardiac response was measured, some also suffered altered EEG readings. This particular side effect is shared between many different drugs too though.

The study notes that two deaths in the survey were associated with liver failure. On the label of the drug when prescribed, it mentions possible issues with hepatic dysfuntion because of these cases. With this in mind, the FDA imposed strict guidelines on patients prescribed pazopanib that they must have their liver function tested regularly. In patients with a history of liver problems, or abnormal results, the manufacturer provides recommendations for dose amendment. Anoyther important recommendation that the FDA has introduced is that the patients heart function is also monitored during treatment.