A prescription drug used for treating patients with advanced kidney cancer could slow the disease progression in liver cancer patients as well, scientists said Monday. Presenting the findings during the 43rd annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, researchers suggested that the oral tablets containing Sorafenib could provide a potential solution for the treatment of patients with fatal liver caner.

Sorafenib is an active ingredient in Nexavar tablets, co-developed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corp. and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., used to treat patients with advanced kidney cancer.

To explore whether the tablets had a positive role in treatment of liver cancer, researchers randomly gave Sorafenib and a placebo to 602 patients with advanced liver cancer. Within an 11-month period, researchers noted that the patients who were given Sorafenib had an additional 2.7 month survival advantage over patients who were on placebo.

"(This)is a major breakthrough in the management of the disease," Dr. Josep Llovet, the lead author of the study, said in the meeting, the AP reports.

Dr. Nancy Davidson of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health agrees.

"That may not sound like a lot of time," but for liver cancer, "this is actually a quite impressive gain," she said. "It is the first effective systemic treatment for liver cancer, which is such a huge problem internationally."

The manufacturers of Nexavar, an FDA-approved drug for kidney cancer, now plan to get it approved for treatment of liver cancer too.