ATLANTA, the United States, Jun 3 (Xinhua) -- Novel targeted therapies have shown effectiveness and safety against different cancers, scientists reported on Saturday.

    At the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Atlanta, experts said new anti-cancer drugs are exciting.

    "We find ourselves with a growing array of molecular targets for innovative anti-cancer agents," said Bruce Johnson, Director of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

    "The research being discussed today is exciting not only because it shows how far we have come in understanding the disease itself, but because it demonstrates the success in translating this knowledge into practice," he told a press briefing at the meeting.

    On the list is Tykerb, an experimental drug which in experiment slowed tumor growth and improved survival among a subset of patients with kidney cancer that continued to grow despite standard therapy.

    The drug also delayed the growth of tumors nearly twice as long as standard chemotherapy did in breast cancer patients who had stopped responding to Herceptin, another targeted cancer drug.

    Tykerb's manufacturer, British drug-maker Glaxo Smith Kline, said it would expand global access to the drug under compassionate use provisions. The company plans to seek approval to sell Tykerb in the United States and elsewhere later this year.

    Another targeted anti-cancer drug is Sunitinib, which can shrank tumors or prevent disease growth in nearly 51 percent of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer that had progressed following standard therapy.

    Sunitinib, taken orally once a day, inhibits several kinase enzymes in cancer cells, including vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR). These enzymes play a crucial role in the uncontrolled growth of tumors and the development of blood vessels that feed them.

    The drug produced by Pfizer is already approved for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer and a rare form of sarcoma called gastrointestinal stromal tumor. Other ongoing studies are evaluating the effectiveness of sunitinib in combination with therapies that target lung cancer in other ways, such as erlotinib(Tarceva).

    And there is Apo2L, which in trials caused tumor cells to commit cellular "suicide" and halted cancer growth in more than half of the patients whose tumors could be assessed.

    According to researchers at the University of Texas, in the first clinical trial to evaluate Apo2L, 37 of the 58 patients with different advanced cancers had stable disease after four cycles of treatment.

    These new targeted drugs will heal more cancer patients, and eventually make cancer not so deadly to humans, an expert commented.

    "According to new data of the American Society of Oncology, the five-year surviving rate of cancer patients has reached 65 percent," said Sun Yan, a professor at the Cancer Institute of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences who took part in the meeting.

    "In our hospital this rate also reaches 50 percent," Sun told Xinhua, "that means cancer is not so deadly as you may think."

    "In fact, new anti-cancer drugs are coming out much more quickly than decades ago. With novel technology targeting factors that control different tumors, humans can deal with cancer better," he noted. Enditem