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By pairing it with drug used to treat cancer, researchers were able to reduce chemotherapy concentration level by 40%
A $12 ANTI-FUNGAL drug used to treat everyday infections such as dandruff and athlete’s foot can help halve chemotherapy costs for advanced breast cancer patients, Singapore scientists have uncovered.
Researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore found that ketoconazole, the anti-fungal drug, complements chemotherapy treatment as it blocks an enzyme in the body from breaking down a drug used to treat cancer.
Docetaxel is a drug used in chemotherapy to treat breast, lung, stomach and prostate cancers, and each cycle, given once every three weeks, can cost between $1,800 and $2,500. A typical chemotherapy treatment requires a patient to go through four cycles. But by pairing docetaxel with ketoconazole, researchers were able to reduce the concentration level of the chemotherapy by 40 per cent – thereby reducing costs by almost half as well – yet achieving the desired results.
Said principal investigator Lee Soo Chin: “The Medisave withdrawal limit for a chemotherapy cycle is $1,200 a month. With the finding, this would make an expensive treatment like docetaxel more affordable.”
More than 1,000 women here are diagnosed with breast cancer and of this number, between 20 and 25 per cent are in the advanced stages – about 10 per cent in stage 3 and another 10 to 15 per cent in stage 4.
Dr Lee and her colleagues conducted the trial between July 2005 and September 2006. A total of 31 patients in advanced stages of breast cancer or with large tumours were given the anti-fungal treatment for three days before chemotherapy cycles started.
Another 51 such patients, treated with the conventional method of 100mg to 140mg of docetaxel between April 2002 and July 2005, were used as the control group.
A breast cancer patient who participated in the “cocktail” trial was housewife Gladys Goh, 58.
She was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in June 2006 and went through four cycles of the anti-fungal and chemotherapy drugs.
“After the first cycle, my tumour was greatly reduced and after all four I was able to go for surgery to have it removed,” she said.
The results of this clinical trial were published in April’s Annals Of Oncology, the official journal of the European Society for Medical Oncology and the Japanese Society of Medical Oncology.
“These two drugs are existing ones, so doctors can apply them to their patients suffering not only from breast cancer but also from stomach, lung and prostate cancers,” said Dr Lee. “But they have to be mindful their patients may be on other medication and our study here is on only two singular drugs.”
To take the findings further, the team is now fine-tuning the clinical trial. “We want to take the study further by tweaking dosages according to the size and weight of the patients,” said Dr Lee.
“The second part of the trial is turning to healthy volunteers. We are looking at 72 volunteers from the three ethnic groups and Caucasians to help distinguish the differences in drug reaction among the various races.”
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