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Success for AstraZeneca after lung cancer treatment improves survival

AstraZeneca is big in incology - Rex Features
AstraZeneca is big in incology - Rex Features

AstraZeneca’s new oncology drug Imfinzi has had further success after clinical trials showed it helps lung cancer patients live longer.

The good news follows a trial in May last year in which people with the inoperable stage III non-small cell lung cancer lived on average 16.8 months without their disease worsening (known as "progression-free survival" in the industry) compared with 5.6 months for those on the placebo.

That led to the drug winning approval from US an Canadian regulators earlier this year. It is still under review by the European Medicines Agency.

Imfinzi is part of a new generation of cancer drugs in the growing field of immuno-oncology. It is an antibody, or protein, that tackles tumours by blocking the mechanism they use to evade detection by the body’s own immune system.

astrazeneca share price

It is already being used to treat people with late-stage bladder cancer, but lung cancer is perhaps the more important disease from a purely financial perspective, given that it is the leading cause of cancer death in the US, resulting in more than 150,000 fatalities a year.

AstraZeneca has first-mover advantage in this particular area because Imfinzi is the first and only medication to be approved for this type of cancer, at this early stage.

Sean Bohen, chief medical officer at AstraZeneca, said: “This provides additional compelling evidence of the clinical benefit that Imfinzi can offer patients in this earlier stage of lung cancer.”

The drug is the same one that last summer prompted more than £10bn to be wiped off the market value of AstraZeneca, after a trial showed it failed to improve progression free survival in lung cancer patients compared to using chemotherapy.

However, that trial had been testing for more advanced stage four lung cancer patients.

“This is good news, further evidence that this drug works well in these patients and it should be taken positively by the market,” said Dr David Cox, a healthcare analyst for Panmure Gordon.

Analysts estimate Imfinzi sales for this type of lung cancer could be worth more than $2bn a year for AstraZeneca – making it a blockbuster drug - provided the pharmaceutical company captures half of the patient population that needs it.

Shares in AstraZeneca were flat by midday, at 5,459p.

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