ORLANDO (Dow Jones)--Two studies looking at a new type of drug being designed to cause cancer cells to die in a different way than currently available drugs showed potential as a therapy for hard-to-treat types of breast cancer.
One study involved women with so-called triple negative breast cancer, which means the tumors lack receptors for estrogen, progesterone and HER2, and involved a drug known as BSI-201, that's being developed by a unit of Sanofi Aventis SA (SNY). The other study looked at women with breast cancer patients with BRCA gene mutations which also makes that type of cancer difficult to treat and involved a drug known as olaparib, which is being developed by AstraZeneca PLC (AZN). The studies were presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.
