AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi triple combo beats chemo in treatment-naive metastatic lung cancer

pharmafile | October 29, 2019 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development |  AstraZeneca, Cancer, Imfinzi, NSCLC, lung cancer, pharma 

AstraZeneca has unveiled positive new Phase 3 data for the combination of Imfinzi (durvalumab) and anti-CTLA4 antibody tremelimumab with chemotherapy in treatment-naïve metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), showing that the therapy met its primary endpoint in the trial.

In a study comparing the efficacy of Imfinzi plus one of five standard-of-care platinum-based chemotherapy options versus chemo alone, the aforementioned combo was shown to generate a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” in progression-free survival.

Additionally, the safety profile of the triple combo was shown to correspond to the profile for Imfinzi plus chemo and did not see any increase in trial discontinuation.

The study is ongoing and will continue to assess the combo’s overall survival benefit, with results expected in 2020.

“The POSEIDON trial provides evidence of the efficacy of Imfinzi in patients with Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. Clinical benefit was observed in a trial population that included a high proportion of patients with squamous disease and multiple choices of chemotherapy regimens,” commented José Baselga, Executive Vice President, Oncology R&D. “Additionally, the potential to add tremelimumab to Imfinzi and chemotherapy may present an important treatment approach in this challenging setting, especially taking into consideration the favourable safety profile.”

Matt Fellows