Results
The trial recruited 71 people, and they were put into 1 of 2 groups at
random:
- 41 people were in the AZD4547 group
- 30 people were in the paclitaxel group
AZD4547 is a tablet that you take twice a day for 2 weeks, and then don’t take for a week. Paclitaxel is a chemotherapy drug that you have into a vein once a week for 3 weeks out of every 4.
The research team looked at how long it was until the cancer started to grow. They found it was:
- 1.8 months for those who had AZD4547
- 3.5 months for those who had paclitaxel
When they looked at how long the people in both groups lived for, they found it was:
- 5.5 months for those who had AZD4547
- 6.6 months for those who had paclitaxel
Side effects
About 7 out of 10 people in each group had side effects. Some of these were mild or short lived. Less than 2 out of 10 people in each group had severe side effects.
The most common side effects of AZD4547 were:
- loss of appetite
- weakness or loss of energy (asthenia)
- feeling sick
- constipation
- sore mouth (stomatitis)
The most common side effects of paclitaxel were:
- hair loss
- a drop in white blood cells
- loss of appetite
- extreme tiredness (fatigue)
Conclusion
The trial team concluded that AZD4547 was not better than paclitaxel for stomach cancer that had spread and had extra copies of the FGFR2 gene.
But even when a trial shows a treatment isn’t useful for a particular group of patients, it is still useful. It adds to our knowledge and understanding of cancer and how to treat it.
The team suggest that it might be useful to look at AZD4547 in a different group of patients, perhaps with different genetic changes.
Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (
peer reviewed 
) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.