In one early trial on 64 cancer patients, 16 had advanced lung cancer--and tumors shriveled dramatically in 4 of them.
Antibiotics would be used to treat most lung infections including tuberculosis, though part of the organ might be removed to treat advanced lung cancer.
But when the two drugs were combined in 12 patients with advanced lung cancer, tumors shrunk in 25% of the patients and stabilized in another 40%--much more impressive results than the two drugs produce alone.
And so, while one might presume that Watson can generate a correct answer for optimal management for the next systemic therapy for someone with progressing advanced lung cancer, at best Watson can reproduce the thought processes of its very limited number of mentors.
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It has released what it says are promising results to trials for its Stutent drug that may reduce advanced breast, lung and kidney cancer.
Patients with advanced lung, kidney and skin cancer were among those who responded favorably, said Roy Herbst, an oncologist at Yale University, who headed the Roche study.
Separately, Pfizer said that the Food and Drug Administration has approved Xalkori capsules, which the company calls the first-ever drug targeting anaplastic lymphoma kinase, or ALK, for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer that is ALK-positive.
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This morning, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it had approved the AstraZeneca (nyse: AZN - news - people ) drug for treating advanced cases of non-small-cell lung cancer, which is the most common form of lung cancer in the United States.
Most notably, we completed U.S. and Japanese filings for crizotinib in ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer and U.S. and EU filings for axitinib in advanced renal cell carcinoma.
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However, on a July 31 conference call, Bristol's Cornelius said the deal had been inspired not just by the improving prospects for Erbitux, which recently had good study results in non-small-cell lung cancer, but also by the promising experimental cancer drugs ImClone has advanced over the past two years.
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