New hope for lung cancer patients – ZYKADIA

The new drug for lung cancer treatment – ZYKADIA, proven to prolong the patient’s life, is now available in Israel.

The new ZYKADIA drug, also called Ceritinib, was approved by the FDA back in April 2014, and now it’s finally available in Israel.

Studies of the drug’s effect show that it is capable of stopping the cancerous cells from multiplying and even of causing them to self-destruct. In some cases, the development of brain metastases stopped, which is a remarkable breakthrough in the field of lung cancer treatment.

The drug is administered in the form of a pill and is prescribed to patients, whose disease doesn’t react to the conventional treatments (chemotherapy and radiation) anymore. In some cases, ZYKADIA is given instead of the conventional treatment, and not after it.

Professor Nir Peled personally supervised the treatment of the first patients in Israel that received ZYKADIA. In one case of a young female patient with brain metastases, the disease’s spread stopped, allowing the patient not to go through another course of radiation. In another case of a 50 y/o male who, according to the doctors had only a few weeks left to live, most of the brain foci disappeared.

Professor Peled told us, that ZYKADIA is not the last in a line of drugs being developed for the treatment of progressive lung cancer. Oncology specialists hope that in a few years there will be several life-prolonging treatment options for patients with progressive lung cancer.

Professor Nir Peled – is a leading oncologist-pulmonologist, working at HMC. He is one of Israel’s top specialists in biological lung cancer treatment, based on genetic mutations of the tumor.

Hundreds of patients are grateful to prof. Peled for saving their lives. Among them is E.P., who was diagnosed with grade 4 lung cancer and was given only a few months to live. Thanks to prof. Peled’s efforts, E.P.’s pathological material was sent for analysis to a specializing lab and a mutation was found. Within 6 weeks of biological treatment, E.P.’s PET scans showed that the metastases shrunk to half their previous size. It has been 3.5 years since he began biological treatments and he is still under prof. Peled’s personal care, hoping for the best.