First line immunotherapy for stage 4 lung cancer! AstraZeneca imfinzi 2 schemes were successful in phase III clinical trials, which significantly delayed disease progression!

October 29, 2019 / BIOON / -- AstraZeneca recently announced the positive progression free survival (PFS) results of Poseidon in the phase III clinical study of PD-L1 tumor immunotherapy, i.e immunotherapy, combined with anti-CTLA4 antibody tremelimumab and chemotherapy for stage IV (metastatic) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) This is a randomized, open label, multicenter, global clinical study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of imfinzi + platinum containing chemotherapy, imfinzi + tremelimumab + chemotherapy and chemotherapy as the first-line treatment for patients with metastatic NSCLC The study included patients with non squamous and squamous diseases and full range PD-L1 expression levels, excluding patients with EGFR or ALK gene mutations The results showed that in the final PFS analysis, compared with chemotherapy alone, patients who received imfinzi and chemotherapy with platinum showed statistically and clinically significant improvement in PFS In addition, compared with chemotherapy alone, PFS of the patients who received the triple therapy of imfinzi + tremelimumab + chemotherapy also showed statistically and clinically significant improvement In the study, the safety and tolerability of imfinzi were consistent with its known safety characteristics The safety of triple therapy is similar to that of imfinzi + chemotherapy, which does not lead to the increase of treatment interruption The study will continue to assess the additional primary end point of overall survival (OS), with data expected in 2020 AstraZeneca will present the results at future medical meetings and share them with regulators Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in men and women, accounting for about one fifth of all cancer deaths Lung cancer can be roughly divided into non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC), of which NSCLC accounts for 80-85% In NSCLC, patients are classified as squamous cell carcinoma (25-30%) or non squamous cell carcinoma (70-75%) Stage 4 lung cancer is the most advanced type of lung cancer, usually referred to as metastatic disease At the time of diagnosis, most of the patients had cancer spread beyond their lungs For patients with metastatic diseases, the prognosis is very poor, and the 5-year survival rate after diagnosis is only 10% Imfinzi is a kind of human monoclonal antibody, targeting to bind programmed cell death factor ligand 1 (PD-L1), blocking the interaction of PD-L1 with PD-1 and CD80, fighting the immune escape strategy of tumor and releasing the inhibition of immune response In terms of lung cancer, up to now, imfinzi has been approved by more than 53 countries (including the United States, the European Union, Japan) for the treatment of non resectable locally advanced (stage III) NSCLC patients after chemoradiotherapy This approval is based on data from the phase III study Pacific study At the beginning of this month, the three-year OS data published at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) showed that persistent and sustained OS benefits were observed in patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC who did not progress after concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy (CRT): the three-year OS rate of the imfinzi treatment group was 57%, the median OS rate was not yet reached, the three-year OS rate of the placebo group was 43.5%, and the median OS rate was 29.1 months Based on this result, imfinzi became the first immunotherapy to be confirmed to have a 3-year survival benefit in an unresectable stage III NSCLC population At present, AstraZeneca is carrying out a large-scale clinical project to evaluate the treatment of NSCLC, SCLC, bladder cancer, head and neck cancer, liver cancer, cervical cancer, cholangiocarcinoma and other solid tumors with imfinzi as single drug therapy and combined therapy with tremelimumab and its drugs In lung cancer, the company is also evaluating imfinzi monotherapy for stage 4 NSCLC (phase III pear study) and treatment for early diseases Imfinzi and imfinzi plus tremelimumab delayed disease progress in phase III Poseidon trial for 1st line treatment of stage IV non small cell lung cancer