Tata doctors add old medicine to reduce breast cancer deaths – ET HealthWorld

Mumbai: Doctors from Tata Memorial Centre reduced deaths among young patients with the most aggressive form of breast cancer by adding an inexpensive drug costing Rs 1,000 a month to the existing chemotherapy regimen.

The drug, carboplatin, is a chemotherapy drug used to treat cancers of the lung, head and neck and ovarian cancer, among others. By adding it to the chemotherapy regimen for triple negative breast cancer – which mainly affects women under 50 years of age and has a death rate of almost 30 per cent, Tata doctors have brought down the relative death rate by 25 per cent, said TMC director Dr Rajendra Badwe on Saturday. If the relative death rates among women younger than 50 is calculated, he said the reduction was almost 40 per cent. These findings were presented at the ongoing San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by TMH professor Dr Sudeep Gupta.

Between 2010 and 2020, the TMC team divided 700 women with triple negative breast cancer into two groups: one that was given the standard chemotherapy and the other that was given the standard medicines along with an injection of carboplatin once a week for eight weeks.

Explaining in absolute numbers, Dr Badwe said, roughly one lakh women in India get breast cancer every year. “Of them, 30,000 suffer from triple negative breast cancer and roughly 10,000 of these patients die every year,’’ he said. The introduction of carboplatin would reduce the number of deaths by 4,000 at least, he added.

The carboplatin trial is only one of the many held as a part of the Department of Atomic Energy – Clinical Trials Centre. “We have been looking for cost-effective interventions that can be used as soon as possible. The carboplatin trial is the 15th one,’’ Dr Badwe, himself a breast cancer surgeon, added.

Until the results of this study, there was no conclusive evidence that this drug should be routinely used as part of the treatment of this disease. Women in both groups underwent surgery after the last cycle of chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy. They were then followed up once every 6 months.

The study main findings show that the five-year disease-free survival increased by 6.6 per cent from 64.1 per cent in the standard arm to 70.7 per cent in the platinum arm and the overall survival increased by 7.6 per cent from 66.8 per cent in the standard arm to 74.4per cent in the platinum arm. One of the main findings was that carboplatin wiped out the tumor completely and the number of women needing full mastectomy was drastically reduced. “Carboplatin-based chemotherapy is well tolerated without high rate of toxicity,’’ said Dr Seema Gulia, who was a part of the study. Given that triple negative breast cancer constitutes about 30 per cent of breast cancer in India and about 45 per cent of breast cancer in women younger than 50 years, the implications are very important, the doctors said, adding that every patient with triple negative breast cancer will be given carboplatin hence forth.