Skin Cancer Drug Zolinza Approved
Thursday, October 12th, 2006The FDA has approved a new drug, Zolinza (manufactured by Pantheon Inc. for Merck & Co) to treat a rare and slow-growing skin cancer, cutaneous T-cell lymphonma. The drug is approved for treatment when the disease persists, gets worse, or comes back after treatment with other medicines.
The approval was won after a study of the safety and effectiveness of Zolinza were evaluated in two clinical trials involving 107 patients with CTCL, each administered the drug after their disease came back or other treatments had failed. Of those patients, 30% saw improvement for an average benefit of 168 days. Some side effects were observed, with the most common serious side effects being blood clots in the lungs, dehydration,deep vein thrombosis, and anemia.
The drug has not been studied in pregnant women, though animal studies suggest Zolinza may harm the fetus.