ATLANTA -- Women with advanced breast cancer early may have another treatment option: A novel experimental mix with drugs delayed the growth of tumors nearly twice as extended as standard chemotherapy did in patients who had stopped responding to Herceptin.

ATLANTA -- Women with advanced breast cancer early may have another treatment option: A novel experimental mix with drugs delayed the growth of tumors nearly twice as extended as standard chemotherapy did in patients who had stopped responding to Herceptin, doctors reported Saturday.

The experimental put drugs into Tykerb, worked so well that an international contemplation of it was stopped early, in March, and all participants were proffered the drug.

In the meditation women who received Tykerb plus the chemotherapy remedy Xeloda had no growth of their tumors for an average of 8oe month That compares to 4oe month for those given simply Xeloda, said Dr. Charles Geyer Jr of Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

He l the thought and reported results Saturday at a meeting in Atlanta of the American Society of Clinical Oncology

Tykerb's manufacturer, Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, paid for the inquiry and said it would expand global access to the unsalable article The company plans to look after approval to sell Tykerb in the United States and elsewhere later this year.

"This is huge" said Dr Roy Herbst, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who had no character in the study but has deliberateed for Glaxo.

"The nearest step will be to use it in patients instead of Herceptin up front" he said.

The benefits be seened to come without serious side weights -- at least in this research of 321 women, Geyer said. Diarrhea, mainly mild, and rash were more used by all in women taking Tykerb.

No patients expanded heart failure, but four of the 160 forward the drug combination had a virtuous decrease in pumping power of the main chamber of the heart -- side consequences also seen with Herceptin.

Tykerb has united big advantage over Herceptin -- it's a pill instead of an intravenous remedy which should make it cheaper and easier to use, doctors said.

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