The results of a new study show that a drug called doxorubicin significantly extends the overall survival of patients with advanced liver cancer. The drug offers a new option for liver cancer treatment, experts said. Researchers from several countries reported in a new issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that they studied 602 patients with advanced liver cancer in the United States, Europe and Australia. None of these patients had received systemic therapy. The results of the study found that taking doxorubicin prolonged overall survival by about 44 percent in patients with advanced liver cancer or primary liver cancer compared to taking a placebo. One of the study’s principals, Jordi Bruxelles of the Hospital Clínico de Barcelona in Spain, said the number of liver cancer deaths worldwide is currently continuing to rise due to the prevalence of hepatitis B and C. The results of the new study show that doxorubicin is “encouraging” as a new treatment option for liver cancer that can prolong patients’ survival. Dodgemet is produced by Bayer Healthcare and works on both tumor cells and tumor blood vessels. The researchers, who presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in June, said they had studied patients with advanced liver cancer in the Asia-Pacific region and found that doxorubicin could extend the survival of these patients by about 47 percent. The drug was approved for the treatment of liver cancer in the United States and Europe last year, respectively. Bayer Healthcare recently issued a press release saying that Dodgemet has been approved by the State Food and Drug Administration in China for the treatment of patients with inoperable advanced liver cancer.