A team of researchers from Nice has just developed a new drug to treat kidney cancer.
According to the National Cancer Institute, kidney cancer represents approximately 3% of cancers diagnosed each year in France. Dr. Gilles Pagès, director of research at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), and his team have been trying to optimize the treatment of this pathology for more than fifteen years. Good news, the Nice researchers have just received the prize from the Amgen France fund for Science and the Human in order to continue the development of a new drug to cure kidney cancerand de facto renforcer l’arsenal therapy for this disease.
A new treatment for kidney cancer
In an interview with the newspaper 20 minutes, Dr. Gilles Pagès came to underline the progress of his team’s research around a new drug once morest kidney cancer. “Before 2008, the life expectancy of a patient was three months. Little by little, we managed to reach an average of three years. We gained years and quality of life, ”he explains to begin with.
While several treatments are already available, the researcher specifies: “You should know that kidney cancer is the cancer where the most drugs have been developed in recent years: in fifteen years, there has been almost one approved treatment per year for this disease. “In reality, there are as many tumors as there are patients”, particularly because the disease is associated with numerous mutations.
Dr. Pagès and his team of researchers have thus developed a molecule capable of inhibiting tumor growth. The latter should thus make it possible to create a new drug. “Our treatment, combined with those that already exist, will hopefully make this disease curable. But just being able to make it a chronic disease and allow patients to live is a source of immense pride,” he explains. He then adds that “the 30% of patients who escape treatment with radiotherapy might live with the drug we created. It is also possible for cancers of the ENT sphere”.
Regarding the arrival of this drug, Dr Pagès said: “We are currently in the regulatory toxicology phases, which will be finalized by the end of 2022, or even the beginning of 2023”. A first clinical trial is expected in 2023 following advice from the health authorities of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
