Health Rounds: Pfizer drug delays progression of advanced breast cancer in trial

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(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

Dec 12 (Reuters) – Pfizer’s Tukysa added to maintenance therapy significantly delayed disease progression in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who had responded well to initial treatment, according to results of a late-stage trial.

Tukysa, known chemically as tucatinib, belongs to a drug class known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors that block the HER2 protein on cancer cells, helping to slow or stop tumor growth.

The drug is already approved for use in colorectal cancer and for later-stage breast cancer.

The 654 patients in the trial, all with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer at diagnosis, had already completed treatment with chemotherapy plus Roche’s antibody drugs Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Perjeta (pertuzumab), without disease progression.

All of them transitioned to maintenance therapy with Herceptin and Perjeta and were randomly assigned to also receive either Tukysa or a placebo.

At a median follow-up of 23 months, the patients who received Tukysa had gone over two years without the disease worsening, known as progression-free survival. That was an improvement of 8.6 months compared with the patients in the placebo group, according to data presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Currently, most patients experience disease progression within two years of starting treatment and must resume chemotherapy, the researchers said.

Patients whose cancers were hormone receptor (HR) negative – that is, their tumor cells did not have proteins that bind to specific hormones – had a 44.6% reduction in risk of progression or death, with a 12.3-month improvement in median PFS.

Those with HR-positive cancer cells had a 27.5% reduction in risk of progression or death and a 6.9-month improvement in median PFS.

The findings emphasize the importance of enhancing HER2 targeting during the maintenance phase, study leader Dr. Erika Hamilton of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville said in a statement.

“Prolonging the maintenance phase allows patients to maintain disease control, while extending their time off chemotherapy,” she said.

GLP-1 DRUGS LINKED TO CHRONIC COUGH IN TYPE 2 DIABETES

Patients with type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of developing a chronic cough when using GLP-1 drugs than with other diabetes medications, a large study suggests.

The risk of developing a cough lasting more than two months, within five years of starting the medication, was 12% higher for those taking a GLP-1 drug, the researchers found.

Their findings are drawn from U.S. data collected between 2005 and 2025 on more than 2 million people with type 2 diabetes, more than 400,000 of whom were receiving GLP-1 drugs, including semaglutide, the main ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s widely used GLP-1s, Eli Lilly’s Trulicity and some older medicines in the class.

GLP-1 drugs are known to have gastrointestinal side effects as they slow digestion. This may also increase the incidence of acid reflux, which is a risk factor for cough, the researchers noted.

But use of the drugs was linked with coughing even in patients without acid reflux, they reported in JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery.

Physicians should consider the potential link between GLP-1 use and chronic cough, especially when other possible causes don’t match patients’ symptoms, the researchers said.

“We recommend doctors who see patients presenting with a chronic cough to be aware about this newly discovered relationship between GLP-1s and cough and therefore ask patients about these meds,” said study coauthor Dr. Anca Barbu of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

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(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; additional reported by Shawana Alleyne-Morris; Editing by Bill Berkrot)