Health & Science

Lung cancer deaths cut in half with AstraZeneca pill, large trial finds

Patients with early-stage lung cancer who took Tagrisso daily for three years had a 51% lower risk of death from the disease.

AP

A once-daily pill from drugmaker AstraZeneca cut deaths in half among a subset of early-stage lung cancer patients who had undergone surgery, according to new clinical trial results.

The findings were presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The data is the first to show how a targeted treatment for early-stage lung cancer impacts survival, said Dr. Roy Herbst, the trial's principal investigator and deputy director at Yale Cancer Center. The drug, called osimertinib and sold under the name Tagrisso, is directed at a specific receptor that helps cancer cells grow.

“I think we’re curing some patients," Herbst said. "We’re really showing progress in lung cancer like never before.”

In an international study of 682 lung cancer patients, roughly half of the participants were given the daily pill for three years, while the other half received a placebo. Five years after their diagnosis, 88% of those who took the pill were still alive, compared with 78% of the placebo group. The study was funded by AstraZeneca and included people from more than 20 countries across the U.S., Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East. 

Read the full story at NBCNews.com 

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