Drug could double lung cancer patients’ life expectancy

A drug that frees the immune system to attack a devastating form of lung cancer has been shown to double the life expectancy of genetically targeted patients.

Mon, 01 Jun, 2015 - 01:00

John von Radowitz

Nivolumab is one of new generation of immunotherapy drugs that release cancer-applied brakes on the immune system called “checkpoints”.

The results, from a major international trial involving patients who had already been treated for the most common form of lung cancer, were described by one expert as a “paradigm shift”.

In the Phase III trial, the last step before a drug is licensed for use in clinics, researchers compared the effectiveness of nivolumab and the standard chemotherapy drug docetaxel in 582 patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Overall, nivolumab reduced the risk of dying by 27% compared with docetaxel and increased typical survival time from 9.4 to 12.2 months.

But the drug was found to be most effective in patients whose cancers produced higher levels of a tumour protein called PD-L1, potentially paving the way to personalised treatments.

For those with the most active PD-L1 gene in their cancer cells survival time more than doubled from eight to 19.4 months.

Lower “expression levels” led to life extensions of 10 months and eight months as amounts of the molecule reduced, while patients with little or no PD-L1 saw no survival benefit. Almost 80% of patients had measurable levels of the protein.

The trial, conducted in North America and Europe, was halted early on ethical grounds because of the strong results. It was led by Dr Luis Paz-Ares, from the Hospital Universitario Virgen Del Rocio, in Seville, Spain.

Commenting on the findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, Dr David Chao, consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, said: “This announcement marks a paradigm shift in the treatment of lung cancer, the biggest cancer killer in the UK.

“This is the first time we have seen Phase III immunotherapy data report survival benefit in this difficult to treat disease.

“For patients that have limited treatment options, it is very encouraging to see the early benefits of immunotherapies.”