Irish patients help develop more successful leukaemia treatment

Irish patients have helped develop a cancer drug that offers a 90% survival rate to those with certain forms of leukaemia.

The international trial has also shown that the drug, Ibrutinib, can be used as an alternative to chemotherapy.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found Ibrutinib to have better rates of survival for patients with the most common form of leukaemia than conventional therapy.

The results of a trial on 391 patients showed the drug gave patients fighting a type of slow-growing blood cancer called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia a 90% chance of survival, compared to 81% who survive on more conventional treatment.

Patrick Thornton, the report’s co-author and a senior lecturer at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, said: “Ireland was per capita the highest recruiter globally to this trial. During the trial, the patients responded quicker to the new drug than to monoclonal antibody therapy and showed fewer side effects.

“The trial also found that patients, who had not responded to, or have resistance to chemotherapy, now have an alternative treatment option,” said Dr Thornton. “This drug represents a complete paradigm shift in the treatment of leukaemia, which could replace the need for chemotherapy at all and changes completely how leukaemia can be treated.”

The research found the drug is better tolerated than traditional forms of treatment, and is an alternative for patients whose cancer cells have built up a resistance to chemotherapy.

Trial results showed four in 10 patients entered remission in a year, compared to four in 100 on a traditional treatment. Ibrutinib works by disabling the enzyme Bruton’s kinase, crucial for leukaemia’s survival.

Due to the success of the clinical trial, Dr Thornton said: “Ibrutinib is now available to patients with the aggressive and chemotherapy resistant forms of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in Ireland.”

It is the most common type of leukaemia and the older you are the higher the chance you have of developing it. Almost 80% of all new cases are diagnosed in people over the age of 60. It occurs more frequently in men than women, and because it develops slowly, many people don’t show symptoms in its early stages.

Many people can live for a long period with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, but there are aggressive variants which may be fatal in only a few years, despite courses of chemotherapy.