I wrote about the drug amrubicin in a prior post, after it demonstrated provocative activity in clinical trials out of Japan that were presented at ASCO 2007. Additional result on amrubicin in previously treated ED-SCLC were presented at a NYC meeting last week, and it's continued to look very encouraging in a clinical setting in which we could really use more options.

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) has been a very challenging disease for patients and physicians, and unfortunately one in which our improvements in treatment have been few and far between. In fact, a recent educational session at ASCO was titled "Small Cell Lung Cancer: What's New Since 1978?". The decreasing frequency of SCLC has also made it increasingly difficult to study, but even when the studies are completed, many emerging potential therapies have proven to have no benefit.

As I mentioned in my introduction to the topic, SCLC is typically sensitive to chemo and radiation initially, but it tends to be considerably less responsive after recurrence. Unfortunately, most SCLC patients, or about 75-80% of patients with LD-SCLC and nearly 100% of patients with ED-SCLC , do subsequently recur.