Astrazeneca has received positive test results from one of its leading medicines in a trial to test its efficacy against a form of lung cancer.
In a statement to the market this morning, the pharmaceutical giant said that results from a Laura Phase III trial for its Tagrisso treatmet showed a “statistically significant and highly clinically meaningful improvement” in progression-free survival.
Progression-free survival captures how long a patient lives without the disease getting worse.
The trial was testing Tagrisso’s potency against a mutated form of non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer, on patients who had already undergone chemoradiotherapy.
Overall survival data showed a “favourable trend” for Tagrisso, although the data was not mature at the time of this analysis.
Susan Galbraith, executive vice president, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “These highly impactful results for the LAURA trial in this potentially curative early lung cancer setting further entrench Tagrisso as the backbone therapy for EGFR-mutated lung cancer.”
Suresh Ramalingam, principal investigator in the trial, said: “These results represent a major advance for patients with Stage III EGFR-mutated lung cancer who have a high propensity for early progression and spread to the brain, and where no targeted therapy is available”.
Tagrisso plus chemotherapy was recently approved in the US based on the FLAURA2 Phase III trial.
The drug has been approved as monotherapy in more than 100 countries including in the US, EU, China and Japan. It has been used to treat over 800,000 patients.
Astrazeneca is the largest listed firm on the FTSE 100 by market capitalisation.