Exciting news announced in treatment of breast cancer

A drug to prevent bone loss during breast cancer treatment also substantially cut the risk that the cancer would return, results that left doctors excited about a possible new way to fight the disease.

It is the first large study to affirm wider anti-cancer hopes for Zometa and other bone-building drugs called bisphosphonates. Zometa, made by Novartis AG, is used now for cancers that have already spread to the bone.

The new study involved 1,800 premenopausal women taking hormone treatments for early-stage breast cancer. Zometa cut by one-third the chances that cancer would recur -- in their bones or anywhere else.

"This is an important finding. It may well change practice," said Dr. Claudine Isaacs, director of the clinical breast cancer program at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center. A drug disappointment:

CHICAGO -- Adding the novel cancer drug Erbitux to standard chemotherapy helped advanced lung cancer patients live just a month longer than chemo alone, a study found.

Although this is the first study to find a survival benefit from a newer, more targeted cancer drug as initial treatment for lung cancer patients, the results left doctors mostly disappointed.

"It's a very small benefit. No one should try to make any more of it than that," said Dr. Roy Herbst, lung cancer chief at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.