Niels Wenstedt | fake images
Johnson & Johnson on tuesday said his lung cancer regimen keeps people alive for at least a year longer than AstraZeneca's Tagrisso, the reference drug for a certain type of lung cancer.
J&J in a statement said its drugs, Rybrevant and Lazcluze, showed a statistically and clinically significant improvement in survival relative to Tagrisso in a pivotal trial. The company expects the benefit to last at least a year and possibly longer, J&J executives said in an interview. The company plans to present the full results at a medical meeting later this year.
“This is a real trigger,” said Biljana Naumovic, president of US Solid Tumor Oncology at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. “People were looking for a difference in overall survival.”
J&J is trying to supplant AstraZeneca's blockbuster Tagrisso, a once-daily pill that has transformed the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations and extended median survival to about three years. These genetic errors cause cancer cells to proliferate. They are responsible for between 10% and 15% of lung cancer cases in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.
J&J executives hailed the result as a turning point that should change the treatment of this type of lung cancer. But there's no guarantee that all doctors and patients will switch to using Rybrevant and Lazcluze, since the regimen has more side effects and requires infusions every few weeks, said Dr. Stephen Liu, director of thoracic oncology and chief of therapeutics at development at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive. Oncology Center.
“I think the announcement that this will lead to people living longer will force us to take a closer look at it,” Liu said.
You want to see who benefits most so you can treat those patients more aggressively and avoid those who are less likely to respond. Rybrevant and Lazcluze can cause people to develop a rash and split their nails.
Like Tagrisso, J&J's regimen blocks the EGFR protein to prevent the growth of cancer cells. It also targets MET, a common pathway that cancer uses to develop drug resistance.
J&J forecasts that annual sales of Rybrevant and Lazcluze could exceed $5 billion. Tagrisso raised around $6 billion for AstraZeneca in 2023.
