Successful trial results for Pfizer's lung cancer drug

Pfizer's drug showed a significant reduction in cancer progression and improved survival rates in people with advanced lung cancer, results showed.

Lorlatinib, already approved and available under the brand name Lobrena in the US, was tested in a clinical trial on hundreds of people with ALK-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

About half of the participants received lorlatinib, while the rest received crizotinib, a previous generation drug.

After five years of follow-up, more than half of patients treated with lorlatinib did not experience cancer progression.

“We're talking about patients with advanced metastatic disease, so this is really an unprecedented discovery,” Pfizer's Despina Thomaidou told AFP.

Sixty percent of patients treated with lorlatinib, taken as a once-daily tablet, were alive without disease progression at five years, compared with 8 percent on crizotinib.

“The risk of progression or death is reduced by 81 percent,” Thomaidou added.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world.

NSCLC accounts for more than 80 percent of lung cancers, and ALK-positive tumors are responsible for approximately five percent of NSCLC cases, with approximately 72,000 new cases annually worldwide.

ALK-positive NSCLC most often affects young patients and is largely unrelated to lifestyle factors such as smoking. It is also very aggressive—25 to 40 percent of people with ALK-positive NSCLC develop brain metastases within the first two years.

Lorlatinib crosses the blood-brain barrier better than previous generations of drugs, Thomaidou said, and works to suppress tumor mutations that cause resistance.

Side effects of lorlatinib included swelling, weight gain, and mental problems.

The results were published at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.