AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso helped patients with an inoperable form of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) live more than three years before their disease began to worsen, data from a late-stage trial showed.
Patients taking Tagrisso experienced a median progression-free survival of 39.1 months, compared to just 5.6 months for those who received a placebo, the researchers reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago.
They received a standing ovation after presenting the likely practice-changing data, according to people who attended the meeting.
After accounting for patients’ other risk factors, Tagrisso reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 84%, according to a report of the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Trial participants all had tumors with mutations in the gene for the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a protein that controls cell division and survival.
They had already undergone standard treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation, without their cancer progressing further.
“The impressive progression-free survival results… represent a major breakthrough for patients with stage III EGFR-mutated lung cancer for whom no targeted treatments are available,” study leader Dr. Suresh Ramalingam of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia said in a statement.
It should now become the new standard of care for patients like those in this study, Ramalingam said.
Tagrisso, known chemically as osimertinib, is a third-generation drug from a class known as epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors. It is approved in over 100 countries for various stages and types of EGFR-mutated NSCLC.
