CHICAGO — An experimental drug dramatically slowed the growth of glioma, a type of brain cancer, if the tumor carried a specific type of genetic alteration, researchers said Sunday, potentially sparing patients exposure to radiation and chemotherapy.
The drug, vorasidenib, is made by Servier Pharmaceuticals, a privately held drugmaker based in France. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Vorasidenib decreased the growth of grade 2 glioma tumors by 61%, meaning that it slowed the time it took tumors to be classified as progressing, or grow by more than a third. Progression took 11.1 months for those who took a placebo, and increased to 27.7 months for those who took vorasidenib.
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