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Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday said its lung cancer regimen keeps people alive for a minimum of a yr longer than AstraZeneca‘s Tagrisso, the go-to drug for a certain kind of lung cancer.
J&J in a press release said its drugs – Rybrevant and Lazcluze – showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement to survival relative to Tagrisso in a pivotal trial. The corporate expects the profit to be a minimum of a yr and possibly longer, J&J executives said in an interview. The corporate plans to present the total results at a medical meeting later this yr.
“That is an absolute igniter,” said Biljana Naumovic, president of U.S. Oncology Solid Tumor at Johnson & Johnson Revolutionary Medicine. “People were searching for an overall survival difference.”
J&J is attempting 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 prolonged the median survival to about three years. These genetic errors cause cancer cells to proliferate. They’re chargeable for between 10% and 15% of lung cancer cases within the U.S., in line with the American Lung Association.
J&J executives hailed the result as a game-changer that ought to change the treatment of the sort of lung cancer. But there isn’t any guarantee doctors and patients will all switch to using Rybrevant and Lazcluze for the reason that regimen comes with more unintended effects and requires infusions every few weeks, said Dr. Stephen Liu, director of thoracic oncology and head of developmental therapeutics at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“I feel the announcement that this results in people living longer will force a harder look,” Liu said.
He desires to see who benefited essentially the most so he can treat those patients more aggressively while sparing those that are less more likely to respond. Rybrevant and Lazcluze could cause people to develop a rash and lead their fingernails to separate.
Like Tagrisso, J&J’s regimen blocks the EGFR protein to forestall cancer cells from growing. It also targets MET, a standard pathway cancer uses to develop resistance to drugs.
J&J forecasts Rybrevant and Lazcluze’s annual sales could top $5 billion. Tagrisso brought in about $6 billion for AstraZeneca in 2023.
