On Saturday, a researcher from the University of California, San Francisco, stood in front of a crowd of doctors at the year’s biggest cancer conference and presented stunning results from a company-funded study of a new Johnson & Johnson drug, Zytiga. The study tested the pill, already approved for men who have received chemotherapy for prostate cancer, in those with an earlier stage of the disease. It slowed the spread of their cancer by 57%. Even more tantalizingly, the results hinted, but didn’t prove, that Zytiga was extending the men’s lives by a startling 33%.
