More than half of patients with advanced forms of disease who took lorlatinib were still alive after five years with no progression

Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found.

The results are the longest progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes ever recorded in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the world’s most common form of the disease. They were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) in Chicago on Friday.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    4·
    30 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

    The results are the longest progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes ever recorded in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the world’s most common form of the disease.

    “To our knowledge these results are unprecedented,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Benjamin Solomon, a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

    “You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the difference between these two drugs,” said Dr Julie Gralow, Asco’s chief medical officer.

    Dr David Spigel, the chief scientific officer of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in London, a world-leading clinical trials facility specialising in new therapies for cancer patients, welcomed the findings.

    “Showcasing the power of cancer-growth blocker drugs, this study could present us with an effective way of stopping cancer in its tracks and preventing it from spreading to the brain.

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