Schwarz is currently compiling the data from three separate rotigotine trials--two on early stage patients and one on late-stage patients--and the company expects to file for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval by this fall.

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And now, the drug, in combination with the chemotherapy Taxol, allows patients with early-stage breast cancer an average of four months without their disease progressing.

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John Shepherd, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St Bartholomew's, told the Sunday Telegraph the success of Britain's cervical cancer screening programme meant that the disease was being caught in its early stage in many more patients.

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By contrast, Roche recently doubled the size of a trial testing a compound in patients with early-stage disease.

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Pfizer hopes to get an early readout by the fall from its second-stage trials involving hundreds of patients.

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One, in early stage human trials, involves injecting antibodies much like the ones the body created by the vaccine into patients.

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