Lung cancer pill which cuts risk of death by half ‘should change the way patients are treated’
A lung cancer pill which cuts the risk of death by half should change the way patients are treated, the researchers behind a decade-long global study have said.
Taking osimertinib once a day after surgery reduces the chance of patients dying by 51 per cent, according to “thrilling” trial results presented at the world’s largest cancer conference in the United States.
The Adaura trial involved 682 patients aged between 30 and 86 in 26 countries and looked at whether the pill could help non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, the most common form of the disease.
All participants had a mutation of the EGFR gene, which is found in about a quarter of global lung cancer cases, and accounts for as many as 40 per cent of cases in Asia. An EGFR mutation is more common in women than men, and in people who have never smoked or have been light smokers.
Around half the trial patients were given the drug, made by AstraZeneca and also known as Tagrisso, with the outcome compared against a placebo in earlier-stage EGFR-mutated NSCLC patients who had undergone surgery to remove their primary tumour. The majority of such patients eventually see their cancer return, despite surgery and add-on chemotherapy.
Osimertinib slashed the risk of death by 51 per cent compared to placebo. The results of the late-stage study, led by Yale University, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago.
Dr Roy Herbst, the deputy director of Yale Cancer Centre and lead author of the study, said: “Thirty years ago, there was nothing we could do for these patients. Now we have this potent drug. Fifty per cent is a big deal in any disease, but certainly in a disease like lung cancer, which has typically been very resistant to therapies.“
Dr Herbst, the assistant dean for translational research at Yale School of Medicine, said the pill was proven to be “practice-changing” and should become the “standard of care” for the quarter of lung cancer patients worldwide with the EGFR mutation.
Some patients in the UK are already able to access the drug, Dr Herbst said, but more should benefit. He said that the study findings should change clinical practice: currently, not everyone diagnosed with lung cancer is tested for the EGFR mutation.
Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK with around 50,000 new cases every year. Only 1 in 10 people survive lung cancer for 10 or more years. An estimated 88 per cent of patients treated with osimertinib were alive at five years compared to 78 per cent on placebo, trial data also showed.
Dave Fredrickson, executive vice president of oncology at AstraZeneca, said: “This is a pretty dramatic and remarkable improvement.”
Outside chemotherapy, there are no drugs apart from osimertinib that have shown to help patients with EGFR-mutated lung cancer live longer, Mr Fredrickson highlighted, adding that there are probably a third of eligible patients who are not yet being prescribed the drug. “We would hope that we would be able to use these data to be able to close that gap,” he said.
AstraZeneca is also expecting to provide details on the impact of combining Tagrisso with chemotherapy in patients with advanced EGFR-mutated lung cancer later this year.
