Sutent (Sunitinib) used for BC

• By lsh
• Posted October 28, 2009 at 3:47 pm
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I'm not familiar with it. Sounds good though. Thanks for the post.

Lynda

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• By Karego
• Posted October 28, 2009 at 8:15 pm
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haven't heard anyone say they are taking it or have heard of it. I'll ask my doctore when I have my next appt.

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• By R2D2
• Posted October 28, 2009 at 10:37 pm
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Correction to the spelling of the drug I mentioned in the body of my post. The correct spelling is Sunitinib. Apparently the commercial name for it is Sutent. I believe it is one of these "targeted" drugs that are coming on the market and were highlighted in an article in the current AARP magazine. Someone mentioned the article not too long ago. It's on page 61 of the November/December issue of the AARP magazine and is titled "New Miracle Drugs". In doing a little research this drug is one of 3 or 4 that have the last three letters "nib". All seem to be trying to do the same thing which is to attack the proteins and block the blood flow to the tumor.

Any doctors on-board that can break this down into layman's terms? It's getting a little above my paygrade as far as understanding this stuff!!!!!

Ten years ago I had a cysto that had a camera and a monitor where I could actually see the scope inside the bladder. The technician (not a doctor then) pointed out the papillary tumor and showed me the small blood vessel that was going to and feeding the tumor. He said this is what they are working on-attempting to develop a drug that will block the flow of blood to the tumor since the tumor MUST have a source of nurishment to survive. Otherwise it will die.

Maybe someone on the BCAN staff can talk with an oncologist and shed some light on this drug and how it works? I would think there are other members that would be interested in the information.

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• By SilverGrizzly
• Posted October 29, 2009 at 8:46 am
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Interesting post. It sounds very promising. I was wondering if you have a reference where we could read more about the use of this drug for bladder cancer. These studies are so hopeful. Maybe there will be some new treatments before too long that can help us all. -Jan

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• By gauge
• Posted October 29, 2009 at 9:23 am
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When I was at the Cleveland Clinic they were accepting bladder cancer patients into a clinical trial that used Sutent. I didn't meet the criteria of being muscle invasive so couldn't enroll. That was in Dec 2007. Have only read a small amount about it since in the literature. My doc thre was reporting amazing results!

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• By Kyle-MO
• Posted October 29, 2009 at 3:59 pm
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Thanks R2D2,
That is very interesting. I don't know how it could target just the tumor, but that's why I'm not in that field of work. Thankyou for posting.

Kyle

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• By R2D2
• Posted October 30, 2009 at 12:53 am
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A few days ago I was online researching this drug and found quite a few references. I'll try to get back online and see what I can find out in the next few days (unfortunately day to day living, like raking leaves, seems to get in the way of spending hours on the computer investigating the important stuff!).

I realize this is a support type of site but don't we have doctors/oncologists plugged into this site who could give us some insight? At least in general terms?

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• By BCAN_Claire
• Posted October 30, 2009 at 9:32 am
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Quick info on Sunitinib/Sutent:

It is not yet approved by the FDA for treatment of bladder cancer, so most people in this forum who would have any experience with it would have received it through a clinical trial.

In case you want to talk to your doctor about this drug, I have included links to two articles that give some background.

Some background on how it works (in plain English) from Chemocare:
http://www.chemocare.com/BIO/sunitinib.asp

Information from a Cleveland Clinic doctor, on a trial using Sunitinib for neoadjuvant (before RC surgery) treatment for patients with locally advanced bladder cancer (but it is from a doctor's publication, so not all in plain English):
http://www.renalandurologynews.com/Treating-Bladder-Ca-with-Sunitinib/artic le/127073/

A quick search of clinicaltrials.gov showed several Phase II clinical trials of sunitinib for bladder cancer actively recruiting. They ranged from starting sunitinib as a "maintenance" drug within 42 days of adjuvant (after surgery) chemotherapy to studies that add sunitinib to Gem/Cis chemo cycles.

If you want to find out more about clinical trials or are interested in seeing if there are clinical trials that you qualify for, please visit the clinical trial section of BCAN's website:

http://www.bcan.org/facing-bladder-cancer/clinical-trials/

Our website includes a clinical trials matching service you can access online or using a toll-free telephone number.

With BCAN's limited resources, I don't often have time to answer questions like these on this site. (We try to keep our medical information on www.bcan.org & leave this open for peer support.) However, we do collect questions like this to answer in our "Ask the Doctor" section of our newsletter that we e-mail quarterly to all who sign up here:

http://www.bcan.org/stay-informed/join-our-mailing-list/

Hope that helps!

Claire

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