A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that AstraZeneca's Tagrisso (osimertinib) can significantly reduce the risk of death in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have undergone surgery.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at data from over 1,400 patients with NSCLC who had undergone surgery and were then randomly assigned to receive either Tagrisso or a placebo.
The results showed that patients who received Tagrisso had a 51% lower risk of death than those who received the placebo. The median survival time for patients who received Tagrisso was 72.1 months, compared to 49.3 months for those who received the placebo.
"This is a very impressive result," said Dave Fredrickson, executive vice president of oncology at AstraZeneca. "It shows that Tagrisso can significantly extend the lives of patients with advanced NSCLC who have undergone surgery."
Tagrisso is a targeted therapy that works by blocking the EGFR protein, which is often found to be mutated in NSCLC tumors. EGFR mutations are responsible for about 15% of all NSCLC cases.
Tagrisso was first approved by the FDA in 2015 for the treatment of EGFR-mutant NSCLC patients who had progressed after other therapies. The new study provides further evidence of the benefits of Tagrisso in this patient population.
"These results are a major advance in the treatment of advanced NSCLC," said Fredrickson. "They show that Tagrisso can offer patients a significant improvement in survival."
The study was funded by AstraZeneca.