New Drug for Carcinoma Cleared by U.S. Food & Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration has just approved the testing of a new drug for the treatment of Carcinoma, which is a cancer that begins either in the skin or in the tissues that line or cover internal organs. The drug is called SPI-1620 and is being made by Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc. It is designed to treat patients who have recurring or progressive carcinoma, not patients who are in the beginning stages and it is also designed to be used in addition to and not in place of chemotherapy.

So far SPI-1620 has shown very promising results in tests with animals and is ready to be tested in humans. It has shown an ability to increase blood flow to tumors by more than 300%, which resulted in more of the anti-cancer drugs being delivered to the tumor, while not causing any damage to the normal organs and tissue, which means the drugs efficiency was greatly increased.

They are hoping that the next phase of testing and further research will lead to SPI-1620 being used in the treatment of solid tumors.

It has a long way to go. It has been approved for Phase 1 testing and drugs usually go through 3 different test phases and in some cases 4. The Phase 1 test will be to determine how safe the drug is, how well patients tolerate the drug, and to study exactly what the drug will do in the human body.

While chemotherapy is one of the most used methods of therapy for solid tumors, it does not always work because of one problem and that is because not enough gets to the tumor and when it gets into the normal tissues, it can cause severe damage. This is where drugs like this comes in, to overcome the difference in blood vessels in tumors and while it is not there to treat the tumor itself, give the chemotherapy drugs help to enable them to do their job better.

It has been shown to work with many different chemotherapy drugs when tested in rats and mice in the lab. And since it has not only proven to get more of the drugs to the tumors, but it has also improved the efficience of the drugs in the test animals there is great expatiation that the results in humans will be the same. Testing in humans will begin as soon as the Investigational Review Boards approve the study.