A pill has been shown to halve the risk of death from a certain type of lung cancer when taken daily, according to clinical trial data released in Chicago at the largest annual conference of cancer specialists.
Taking the drug osimertinib, marketed as Tagrisso, dramatically reduced the risk of death by 51 percent in patients whose tumors were surgically removed, according to results presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
Lung cancer is the form of the disease that causes the most deaths, with approximately 1.8 million deaths each year worldwide.
The treatment developed by the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca targets a certain type of lung cancer in patients suffering from so-called non-small cell cancer, the most common type, and who have a certain type of mutation.
These mutations, on what’s called the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), affect 10 to 25 percent of lung cancer patients in the United States and Europe, and 30 to 40 percent in Asia.
The clinical trial involved some 680 early stage disease participants in more than 20 countries. They first had to undergo surgery to remove the tumour, then half of the patients received the treatment daily and the other half a placebo.
The result showed that taking the tablet resulted in a 51 percent reduction in the risk of death for treated patients compared to the placebo.
After five years, 88 percent of patients who received the treatment were still alive, compared with 78 percent of patients who received the placebo.
These data are “impressive,” said Roy Herbst of Yale University, who presented them in Chicago. The drug helps “prevent the cancer from spreading to the brain, liver and bones,” he added at a news conference.
About one-third of non-small cell cancer cases can be operated on when they are detected, he said.
“This is quite a dramatic and remarkable improvement,” said Dave Fredrickson, executive vice president of oncology at AstraZeneca in an interview with Reuters news agency.
“It’s hard for me to convey, I think, how important this finding is,” Nathan Pennell of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation said at the news conference.
“We started to enter the era of personalized therapy for patients at an early stage,” said Pennell, who did not participate in the studies, noting that “we need to firmly close the door on one-size-fits-all treatment for people with non-small cell lung cancer.”
Osimertinib is already authorized in dozens of countries for various indications and has already been given to some 700,000 people, according to a press release from AstraZeneca.
The US approval for early stages in 2020 was based on previous data showing an improvement in patient disease-free survival, that is, the length of time a patient lives without cancer recurrence.
But not all doctors adopted the treatment, and many were waiting for the overall survival data to be presented Sunday, Herbst said.
He stressed the need to screen patients to find out if they have the EGFR mutation. Otherwise, he said, “we can’t use this new treatment.”
Osimertinib, which targets the receptor, causes side effects such as severe fatigue, rash or diarrhea.
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