Doctors have hailed ‘amazing’ research findings showing that a new drug combination has stopped the progression of lung cancer for more than 40% longer than standard treatment.
Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death and is responsible for approximately 1.8 million deaths per year. The chances of survival in people with advanced forms of the disease, where the tumors have spread, are particularly poor.
Patients diagnosed with advanced lung cancer who took the combination of amivantamab and lazertinib continued to live without their disease progressing after an average of 23.7 months, according to data from the global study. The average progression-free survival in patients taking the standard drug osimertinib was 16.6 months, the study found.
Experts said the breakthrough came amid a “golden age” of cancer research, in which a better understanding of what drives specific tumors is leading to better ways to beat the disease.
Prof. Martin Forster, medical oncologist at University College Hospital and lead investigator of the study in Britain, said: “A better understanding of the biology that causes lung cancer has guided the development of these targeted therapies.
“It is amazing to see that this new combination shows longer cancer control than osimertinib, which was a breakthrough treatment just a few years ago.”
The phase 3 trial recruited 1,074 patients between 2020 and 2022 from countries including Britain, the US, Australia, France, Brazil, India and China. All had advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.
In the British arm of the study, patients were recruited from the University College London NHS Trust, the Christie in Manchester, Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals in London, the University Hospitals of Nottingham NHS Trust, the Royal Marsden NHS Trust and the Edinburgh Cancer Center at Western General. Hopital.
Everyone in the study also had a mutation in the gene for the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which is found in as many as a quarter of lung cancer cases worldwide, and in about 40% of cases in Asia.
An EGFR mutation is more common in women than in men, and in people who have never smoked or have been light smokers.
Patients in the study were randomly assigned to the combination of amivantamab and lazertinib; the standard treatment for this group of patients, osimertinib; or lazertinib.
Amivantamab is a monoclonal antibody, while Lazertinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Both drugs target cancer cells to stop their advance.
Prof. Raffaele Califano, consultant in medical oncology and principal investigator of the study at Christie, said: “By combining these two drugs, which cause the cancer to grow in different ways, we see a significant improvement in progression-free survival rates compared to the drug we are currently using. .
“Survival rates for lung cancer are still very low compared to other forms of the disease and so it is a welcome development to see such positive results.”
In August, the drug combination was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the US. Doctors involved in the study hope the treatment will also be available on the NHS in the future.
“The more treatment options we have, the more hope we provide to patients and families,” said Califano. “We are hopeful that this option will be endorsed by Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and reimbursed for use by the NHS.”
Most patients experienced some side effects. The most common types reported in the Janssen-funded study were a rash, an infection or a blood clot.
Doctors involved in the study said the combination of drugs was part of an emerging area of treatment called precision medicine.
Advances in precision medicine have led to new treatments tailored to specific characteristics of individuals, such as a person’s genetic makeup or the genetic profile of a patient’s tumor.
Forster said: “This precision approach improves outcomes for many more of our patients as new drugs are developed to exploit vulnerabilities identified in more and more lung cancers.”
Paula Chadwick, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, said: “Hope is rocket fuel for people with lung cancer. Every new breakthrough keeps that hope burning, even if it does not directly benefit the individual.
“Although this potential new treatment would only be available to a select group of people within the lung cancer community, it demonstrates the continued progress in our fight against the disease, improving treatment options, transforming care and, ultimately, helping people to live well with lung cancer. longer cancer.”
Anna Kinsella, research information manager at Cancer Research UK, described the results as “good news”, with those taking the drug combination able to “have more time with their loved ones”.
“We are in a golden age of cancer research, where a better understanding of what causes specific cancers is yielding new and better ways to beat the disease,” Kinsella added. “Research like this helps more people live longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer.”