
Novartis’ drug doubly effective as chemotherapy for treating lung cancer
pharmafile | December 8, 2016 | News story | |Â Â NSCLC, Novartis, chemotherapyÂ
Novartis have released that its drug, Zykadia, in Phase III trials, was twice as effective at slowing progression in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The results, posted from its ASCEND-4 study found that patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+) NSCLC had a median progression-free survival of 16.6 months compared to 8.1 months in those patients treated with chemotherapy.
The extent of the positive results from Zykadia being used a first-line treatment instead of the standard therapy will come as a massive boost for gaining further approvals for the drug. Novartis has not, as yet, acquired enough data to reveal overall survival statistics on the drug – only noting that “a positive trend in favour of Zykadia was observed”.
“The patient response to treatment is high and durable in the first-line setting,” said Bruno Strigini, CEO, Novartis Oncology. “Based on these results, Novartis is initiating discussions with regulatory authorities worldwide regarding this potential use of Zykadia to further improve outcomes for patients with ALK+ advanced NSCLC.”
Zykadia would enter into an exceptionally crowded market, with heavyweight drugs such as Opdivo and Keytruda already making large inroads into markets. Keytruda, for instance, has already been given FDA approval for first line treatment of metastatic NSCLC exhibiting high levels of the protein PD-L1.
Ben Hargreaves
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