Relay Therapeutics, a pioneering biotech firm in US, announced on Monday that its experimental combo treatment is helpful in improving the length of time a breast cancer patient lived without worsening the condition.

For testing the effectiveness of the combo treatment, experts looked at 118 heavily pre-treated patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer. They found that taking 600 mg of RLY-2608 along with fulvestrant led to progression free survival (PFS) or helped the patients live longer without the disease being getting progressed further.

This treatment is designed particularly to target mutation of PI3Kα protein. The therapy was well tolerated by all the patients across all doses and helped 52 patients live about 9.2 months longer.

Fulvestrant is a hormone therapy used to treat advanced breast cancer in post-menopausal women. It is normally used with cancer drugs like palbociclib or abemaciclib, according to Cancer Research UK. Sold under the brand name Faslodex, it is manufactured by AstraZeneca.

Novartis'Piqray, which is the first approved PI3K inhibitor, has severe side effects ranging from nausea, rash, hair loss, fatigue, hair loss, abdominal pain and rashes, Reuters reported.

Relay revealed that its combo treatment  fewer side effects.

"These interim data suggest that by selectively targeting mutant PI3Kα, RLY-2608 has the potential to offer a level of benefit to patients that has not previously been possible with existing non-selective medicines, while also having significantly less toxicity," President of R&D at Relay Therapeutics, Don Bergstrom, said in a statement.

The company announced that it is currently analyzing the effect of RLY-2608 alone, in combination with fulvestrant, and in combination with fulvestrant and ribociclib or atirmociclib.

Breast cancer is the second common cancer across the world. More than 2,296,840 new cases of breast cancer were reported in 2022, according to the World Cancer Research Fund International. About 6,70,000 people were killed by breast cancer in 2022, a report from the World Health Organization(WHO) shows.