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Johnson & Johnson Tuesday said its lung cancer treatment keeps people alive for at least a year longer than AstraZenecaThis is Tagrisso, the reference drug for a certain type of lung cancer.
J&J said in a statement that its drugs – Rybrevant and Lazcluze – showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in survival compared to Tagrisso in a pivotal trial. The company expects the profit to last at least a year, if not longer, J&J executives said in an interview. The company plans to present the full results at a medical meeting later this year.
“It’s an absolute trigger,” said Biljana Naumovic, chair of US Solid Tumor Oncology at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. “People were looking for an overall difference in survival.”
J&J is trying to supplant AstraZeneca’s blockbuster Tagrisso, a once-daily pill that has transformed the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations and extended median survival to about three years. These genetic errors cause cancer cells to proliferate. They are responsible for 10 to 15 percent of lung cancer cases in the United States, according to the American Lung Association.
J&J executives hailed the finding as a game-changer that is expected to change the treatment of this type of lung cancer. But there’s no guarantee that doctors and patients will all switch to Rybrevant and Lazcluze, because the regimen causes more side effects and requires infusions every few weeks, said Dr. Stephen Liu, director of thoracic oncology and chief of developmental therapies at Lombardi Comprehensive at Georgetown University. Cancer Center.
“I think the news that this is leading people to live longer will force a closer look,” Liu said.
He wants to see who benefited the most so he can treat those patients more aggressively while sparing those who are less likely to respond. Rybrevant and Lazcluze may cause a rash and cause nails to break.
Like Tagrisso, J&J’s diet blocks the EGFR protein to prevent cancer cell growth. It also targets MET, a pathway commonly used by cancer to develop drug resistance.
J&J predicts that annual sales of Rybrevant and Lazcluze could exceed $5 billion. Tagrisso brought in around $6 billion for AstraZeneca in 2023.
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