AstraZenca’s Zeta clinical trial achieves success

AstraZenca’s Phase III clinical trial, titled Zeta, showed that vandetanib significantly extended progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced medullary thyroid cancer (MTC).

The investigational drug formulation demonstrated a 54 per cent reduction in the rate of progression compared to placebo.

These results were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago this week.

“Patients with advanced medullary thyroid cancer currently have few or no options for treatment once they reach this late stage of their disease”, said Dr Peter Langmuir, executive director of medical science at AstraZeneca.

He went on to say that, given the results of the Zeta trial, the company will soon file regulatory submissions for approval of vandetanib with the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency.

According to Bupa, MTC is rare and affects around one in every 20 people diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Around one in four of those diagnosed with MTC have inherited the disease.