A pill seems that reduces the risk of death by 50% from a certain type of lung when taken daily after surgery to remove the tumor, according to the “impressive” results of a clinical trial.

These results were presented today Sunday in Chicago, at the conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

Lung cancer is the type of cancer that causes the most deaths of any other, about 1.8 million each year worldwide.

THE osimertinib, drug developed by the company AstraZeneca, (marketed under the trade name Tagrisso), targets a specific form of lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients who show a particular mutation. This mutation in the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor occurs in 10-25% of patients in the US and Europe and in 30-40% in Asia.

The clinical trial involved 680 patients in stages 1b to 3a from 20 countries. The patients first underwent surgery to remove the tumor, and then half received the drug and the rest a placebo.

Those taking the drug had a 51% reduction in the risk of death, compared to those given a placebo. In five years, the 88% of patients who received the drug were still alive, compared to 78% of those who took the placebo.

These figures are “impressive,” Roy Herbst of Yale University, who presented the results at the conference, said in a statement. The drug prevents metastases in the brain, liver and bones, he also said in the press conference he gave.
About a third of these non-small cell lung cancers are operable, he noted.

“It’s hard to assess whether the results are significant,” said Nathan Pennell of the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the study. “We have entered the era of personalized treatments for early-stage patients” and “we should close the door on identical treatments for everyone,” he added.

Osimertinib is already on the market in dozens of countries, and has been administered to nearly 700,000 people, according to AstraZeneca. In the US, it was approved in 2020, based on earlier evidence that it improved patients’ survival time without cancer recurrence. Roy Herbst explained that not all doctors have adopted this treatment, because they were waiting for the results of a larger study.

He also stressed the need to screen patients to see if they carry the EGF mutation. “Otherwise, we cannot use this new treatment,” emphasized the oncologist.

Side effects of osimertinib include fatigue, rashes, and diarrhea.