Pfizer Breast Cancer Drug Helps Revive Discarded Strategy
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Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and Novartis AG have dug an idea out of the pharmaceutical dustbin to create new medicines that are showing blockbuster potential against hard-to-treat forms of breast cancer.
In findings reported yesterday, Pfizer’s drug, called palbociclib, stopped tumor growth for 20.2 months in advanced forms of hormone-related breast cancer, twice the time seen with an older therapy alone. The treatment, projected to add $3.1 billion in sales by 2020, is based on a strategy largely abandoned in the 1990s after it failed to show consistent response against a broad range of cancers.