BARCELONA, Spain — Patients with advanced cancers often develop a secondary condition that causes them to shed weight, making it even harder to tolerate their cancer treatments. Called cachexia, it’s an under-recognized syndrome that researchers are still trying to tease out, and one that’s attracting more interest from drugmakers.
On Saturday, Pfizer reported that an experimental antibody not only helped cancer patients with cachexia regain some weight versus placebo, but that it also seemed to increase their muscle mass and activity levels, signaling that the added weight translated into meaningful benefits.
“The weight gain compared to patients on placebo is very important, but showing a consequence of that weight gain in patient wellness is also very important, and that’s what we set out to do,” Charlotte Allerton, Pfizer’s head of discovery and early development, told STAT.
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