Description
Tarceva 150mg tablet is specifically recommended for those patients who are with the NSCLC and whose cancer has spread beyond its origin and that has certain types of EGFR mutations.
Your doctor will do a test in order to make sure that this drug is appropriate for you.
How Tarceva may work:
Tarceva is not a conventional chemotherapy drug. Tarceva may affect both healthy cells as well as cancerous cells, but the way tarceva 150 mg works is not fully known.
Tarceva usually interferes with the activity of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR). Some cancerous cells have EGFR mutations that can help it in order to grow as well as divide. Your doctor will do a test in order to determine if your cancer has any EGFR mutations and make sure that tarceva 150 mg is appropriate for you.
Possible benefits of Tarceva
In a study of 174 patients with the Non Small Cell Lung Cancer whose tumors tested positive for the certain types of EGFR mutations, erlotinib 150 mg was studied as initial therapy compared with the conventional chemotherapy:
- Patients who consumed Tarceva (erlotinib) had a 66% lower risk of the cancer getting worse or of death than those patients who received chemotherapy.
- Those patients who have taken erlotinib 150 mg mainly had an overall survival time about 22.9 months in comparison with approx 19.5 months for such patients who have taken chemotherapy.
- Tumors shrank or disappeared for 65% of patients who consumed erlotinib and 16% of such patients who have received the chemotherapy.
