Strong Ph III data for Wyeth's RCC drug

The USA's Wyeth Pharmaceuticals says that preliminary data from an interim analysis of an ongoing Phase III clinical trial of temsirolimus (CCI-779), its investigational drug for advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), showed that it significantly increased overall survival as a first-line treatment of patients with advanced disease and poor risk features, compared to interferon-alpha, a conventional treatment for this condition.

In data from the open-label, randomized, trial presented during a late-breaking plenary session at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, held in Atlanta, Georgia, patients treated with the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) inhibitor experienced a 3.6-month, or 49%, increase in median overall survival time compared with patients treated with interferon-alpha alone (10.9 months versus 7.3 months; p=0.0069).