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ESMO conference: Roche's Tecentriq improves survival in lung cancer patients

Roche Holding AG said its medicine Tecentriq in a late-stage study helped improve overall survival in certain patients with lung cancer.

Roche and its unit Genentech Inc. are studying whether Tecentriq is better than chemotherapy as an initial therapy for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer whose disease does not exhibit certain mutations responsible for causing the cancer to behave abnormally. The study, a phase 3 trial called IMpower110, is made up of 572 patients with the programmed death-ligand 1, or PD-L1, a protein found in cancer not yet treated with chemotherapy.

Roche said the main goal of the trial is to improve the overall survival in patients expressing different levels of PD-L1. So far, the trial has met its main goal in patients who express a high PD-L1: Tecentriq, also known as atezolizumab, improved overall survival by 7.1 months compared to chemotherapy alone in the subgroup of patients.

However, there was no statistically significant difference in overall survival between Tecentriq and chemotherapy in patients with medium levels of PD-L1. Patients in this subgroup had an overall survival of 18.2 months compared to 14.9 months for those on chemotherapy.

The findings will be presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology 2019. Switzerland-based Roche said it will continue the study to understand Tecentriq's effects in patients with lower levels of PD-L1 expression.

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South San Francisco, Calif.-based Genentech is evaluating Tecentriq as a monotherapy or in combination with other medicines across different types of lung cancer in nine phase 3 studies. Genentech will submit the data to global regulatory authorities — in the U.S. and EU, among others — to bring the treatment to patients.

The European Society for Medical Oncology is holding its 2019 scientific meeting in Barcelona, where more than 3,900 study abstracts have been submitted for review by oncology professionals from around the world.