Boston (SmartAboutHealth) - Pfizer Inc. must be all smiles today as the results of a new study have revealed that their lung cancer drug was successful in shrinking some cancer tumors.

The new experimental drug has been in development by Pfizer for quite some time now, and works by going after a gene mutation in the body.

The drug is known as crizotinib, and was tested on patients in a small study to see how effective it would be in helping with lung cancer tumors.

What researchers found was that following the study, the drug worked well, as over 50% of the patients saw their lung cancer tumors shrink thanks to the use of the drug.

On top of that, over 90% of the patients tested were found to show health benefits from taking the drug.

The benefits consisted of either the disease not getting worse, or the tumor shrinking just a bit.

The expectation going into the study was for only around 10% to 20% of the patients to show this much success with the drug.

The drug is taken twice daily and helps patients by going after the gene known as ALK. It gets into the ALK enzyme and can help stop the growth of tumors and shrink them.

The study was led by Dr. Yung-Jue Bang and was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.