AstraZeneca experimental lung cancer drug shows promising results

AstraZeneca’s experimental lung cancer drug showed improved overall survival rates in phase III trials, the pharmaceutical giant said on Tuesday.

AstraZeneca said high-level overall survival rates from the global Tropion-Lung01 trial "numerically favoured" datopotamab deruxtecan compared to standard chemotherapy drug docetaxel in the overall trial population of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with at least one prior therapy.

NSCLC is to the most common form of lung cancer.

In the pre-specified subgroup of patients with non-squamous NSCLC, datopotamab deruxtecan also showed a "clinically meaningful" improvement in overall survival compared to docetaxel.

Survival rates did not reach statistical significance in the overall trial population, however.

Susan Galbraith, executive vice president for oncology research and development at AstraZeneca, said: "These results reinforce the potential for datopotamab deruxtecan to replaced conventional chemotherapy in this late-line setting and underscore our confidence in ongoing trials, evaluating this therapy in first line lung cancer."

Ken Takeshita, global head of R&D at Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo, which is developing the drug with AstraZeneca, said: "These data will support our ongoing discussions with regulatory authorities globally to potentially bring datopotamab deruxtecan to patients as quickly as possible, and mark another step forward in creating new standards of care for patients with cancer."

AstraZeneca noted that the safety profile of datopotamab deruxtecan was "consistent" with previous analysis, including fewer dose reductions or discontinuations due to adverse events when compared to docetaxel.