Zoledronate, marketed by Novartis under the trade name Zometa, has been found to significantly reduce the risk of cancer recurrence in premenopausal women with hormone-sensitive, early-stage breast cancer. This is the conclusion reached by the Austrian Breast & Colorectal Cancer Study Group (ABCSG), which carried out a major trial involving 1,800 premenopausal women taking hormone treatments for early-stage breast cancer.

ABCSG reported at the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago that Zometa cut by one-third the chances that cancer would come back. The downside is that most breast cancers occur after menopause, and the effectiveness in that group is still to be assessed.

The drug carries mild side effects and is usually administered intravenously over 15 min every 3-4 weeks in cancer patients. Lead author Michael Gnant, professor of surgery at the Medical University of Vienna, said that more studies are needed to determine the administration schedule and the dose.

In other recent breast cancer news, Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG announced Friday that new data from a study with Herceptin showed impressive results in helping women with advanced, HER-2 positive metastatic breast cancer to live longer without their cancer progressing