The noteworthy success of a late-stage trial of the experimental drug Alpharadin, for treating patients with advanced prostate cancer, has brought the tests to an early end --- with researchers having found that patients on the new drug lived nearly three months more on average vis-a-vis the patients who were administered a standard treatment plus placebo!

According to the information shared by the researchers, the new drug is capable of targeting the tumors effectively as it delivers infinitesimal, highly-charged radiation doses to secondary tumors in the bones of the patients suffering from advanced prostate cancer.

A trial of 922 prostate cancer patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, showed that when the potent alpha radiation treatment was administered to the patients, they not only lived longer than their counterparts who had not been given the Alpharadin drug, but also experienced fewer side effects and lesser pain.

Revealing that the source of radiation - radium-223 chloride - acts like calcium and sticks to bone, the researchers believed that had the treatment not been given to the prostate patients with secondary cancers, the tumors would have spread to the bone in 90 percent of the cases.

However, the Alpharadin trial was halted early as the medics deemed it unethical that all the patients were not being offered the treatment.

Terming the trial as "a significant step forward, lead researcher Dr Chris Parker said: "It would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment to those taking placebo"!