Yale researchers find phenoxidiol restores sensitivy in cancer patients

Phenoxodiol, an investigational anti-cancer drug that is being studied by leading researchers at Yale University, USA, has been found to be active and to restore platinum drug sensitivity to some patients who have shown prior resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy agents. The data were presented at the Annual Meeting on Women's Cancer organized by the Society of Gynecologic Oncology.

The study is designed to test the ability of phenoxodiol to reverse the resistance that develops in most ovarian cancers to standard chemotherapy. The study was conducted at Yale, New Haven Hospital, as well as at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

"Phenoxodiol was developed to overcome this chemical resistance within tumor cells, thereby allowing standard anti-cancer drugs such as cisplatin, carboplatin and paclitaxel to continue to work in this aggressive form of cancer," said Michael Kelly, Fellow at Yale University School of Medicine. "What we are seeing with phenoxodiol is an encouragingly-high proportion of tumors either shrinking or stabilizing with standard drugs, when we know that the tumor is unlikely to respond to those standard drugs alone," he added.