Roche lung cancer therapy succeeds in mid-stage trial
pharmafile | August 17, 2015 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Genentech, Roche, atezolizumab, lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer
Roche’s biotech arm Genentech has scored positive results in a pivotal Phase II study of its investigational cancer immunotherapy atezolizumab.
The treatment, which targets PD-L1 (Programmed Death Ligand-1) proteins on tumour cells, met its primary endpoint and shrank tumours in people with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumour expressed PD-L1.
The study of 667 people showed the amount of PD-L1 expressed by a person’s cancer correlated with their response to the medicine. Genentech says that adverse events in the study were consistent with those previously observed for atezolizumab. The drug is already under investigation in people with bladder cancer.
Earlier this year, the FDA granted atezolizumab a Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the treatment of people whose NSCLC expresses PD-L1 and who progressed during or after standard treatments including platinum-based chemotherapy.
Genentech will present the new results at an upcoming medical meeting, and says it will discuss these data as well as results from its other lung cancer studies with health authorities in order to bring the medicine to patients as quickly as possible.
Dr Sandra Horning, chief medical officer and head of global product development at Roche, says: “We are encouraged by the number of people who responded to atezolizumab and maintained their response during the study, which is particularly meaningful for people who had received several prior treatments.
Genentech became a Roche subsidiary in 2009. The San-Francisco-based company currently has seven Phase III studies evaluating atezolizumab alone or in combination with other medicines as a potential new treatment for people with early and advanced stages of lung cancer.
Joel Levy
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