Lung cancer drug trial shows big survival gains with drug mix

Patient survival rates for an aggressive form of lung cancer jump significantly when a drug made by Amgen is paired with an immunotherapy drug from AstraZeneca, according to study results shared on Saturday. The clinical study found that giving Amgen's Imdelltra together with AstraZeneca's Imfinzi lowered the risk of death by 58 percent compared to using the Astra drug by itself for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer. People who took both medicines lived for a median of 21.1 months, while those given only Imfinzi lived for 12.7 months. Nearly 80 percent of trial patients who got the combination treatment were still alive after one year, compared to 53 percent of the patients who received Imfinzi alone. Paul Burton, who serves as chief medical officer at Amgen, called these results unprecedented for treating this type of cancer. Full details from the 563-patient study were shared at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Madrid and printed in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Side Effects

Serious side effects like low white blood cell counts happened in 20.9 percent of the patients on the dual therapy, compared to 10.8 percent for the single therapy group. A potentially dangerous inflammatory response known as cytokine release syndrome showed up in 49.6 percent of patients who got the Amgen drug, though only one of those cases was serious and no deaths were linked to it. Bad side effects caused 5.7 percent of patients on the mix and 5.8 percent on Imfinzi alone to stop their treatment.

Context

Small cell lung cancer is a very aggressive and hard-to-treat disease that makes up a small share of all lung cancer cases. Most patients cannot undergo surgery and rely on treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which makes new drug combinations an important area of medical research.