A Pfizer medicine has been shown to greatly reduce cancer progression and improve survival outcomes for people in the advanced stages of a form of lung cancer, results published Friday showed.
Lorlatinib, which is already approved and available under the brand name Lobrena in the United States, was tested in a clinical trial of hundreds of people with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Roughly half received lorlatinib while the rest received crizotinib, an earlier generation drug.
After five years of follow-up time, more than half of patients treated with lorlatinib did not see their cancer progress.
“We’re talking about patients with advanced metastatic disease — so this is actually a truly unprecedented finding,” Pfizer’s Despina Thomaidou told AFP.
Sixty percent of patients receiving lorlatinib, an oral one a day tablet, were alive without disease progression after five years compared to 8 percent on crizotinib.
“There is an 81 percent reduction in the risk of progression or death,” added Thomaidou.
Worldwide, lung cancer is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths.
Over 80 percent of lung cancer cases are NSCLC, with approximately five percent of cases resulting from ALK-positive tumors. Approximately 72,000 new cases of NSCLC are diagnosed globally each year.
Younger people are primarily affected by ALK-positive NSCLC, which is mainly independent of lifestyle factors like smoking. Additionally, it is quite aggressive; during the first two years of being diagnosed with ALK-positive NSCLC, 25–40% of patients had brain metastases.
According to Thomaidou, lorlatinib inhibits tumor alterations that lead to resistance by penetrating the blood-brain barrier more effectively than medications from previous generations.
Lolatinib side effects included weight gain, edema, and mental health issues.
The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
