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ASCO conference: Roche drug combo helps lung cancer patients live longer

Roche Holding AG's combination regimen of its drugs Tecentriq and Avastin along with chemotherapy stopped cancer from growing in a phase 3 study among certain lung cancer patients who had not received chemotherapy.

Tecentriq targets programmed death ligand 1, or PD-L1, a protein found on the surface of cancer cells that helps them evade body's cancer-killing immune cells.

Roche's study, named IMpower150, involved 1,202 patients with nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer having a wild genotype, or WT — a gene in its natural, non-mutated form. The latest results from the study were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The trial was designed to include WT patients with high presence of an effector T-cell, or Teff, gene signature, an indication of immune response, and excluded those with an EFGR or ALK genetic mutation.

IMpower150 assessed three groups of patients — Tecentriq plus chemotherapy in form of carboplatin plus paclitaxel, Avastin plus chemotherapy and Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy.

Results showed that WT patients on the combination of Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy lived for a median of 8.3 months while keeping the disease at bay, known as progression-free survival, versus 6.8 months for patients who received Avastin plus chemotherapy.

In the WT patients with high Teff expression, the progression-free survival for Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy group was 11.3 months, versus 6.8 months for Avastin plus chemotherapy group.

The Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy combination prolonged WT patients' survival since the beginning of treatment by 19.2 months, compared to 14.7 months for Avastin plus chemotherapy.

Roche also saw higher progression-free survival for Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy group compared to Avastin plus chemotherapy group among all the WT patients with low Teff expression, the presence of EFGR or ALK genetic mutation, low or negative PD-L1 expression as well as patients whose cancer had spread to the liver.

The safety profile of Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy was consistent with previously reported safety risks of individual drugs.

Treatment-related adverse events were reported among 94.4% of the patients in Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy group and 95.4% patients in Avastin plus chemotherapy group. There were 11 treatment-related deaths in the Tecentriq group, with 9 patients dying in the Avastin plus chemotherapy group.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May granted a priority review for Tecentriq plus Avastin plus chemotherapy combination as a first-line treatment for a common type of lung cancer.

The 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is expected to bring together more than 32,000 professionals from all over the world, with more than 2,500 study abstracts to be presented on-site and an additional 3,350 abstracts to be published online.