Positive Results for Pfizer’s Lung Cancer Therapy, Xalkori
click Xalkori” src=”http://i61.tinypic.com/kng1x.jpg” width=”204″ height=”126″ />Pfizer have announced positive late-stage clinical data from a phase III trial of Xalkori, in comparison to chemotherapy.
Pfizer revealed that the clinical study met the primary objective of significantly prolonging progression-free survival in previously-untreated patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), when compared to standard platinum-based chemotherapy regimens.
The phase III clinical trial is the second late-stage study that evaluated Pfizer’s Xalkori against chemotherapy.
Pfizer’s Xalkori is widely approved by regulatory bodies as a second-line therapy for progression-free survival in previously-treated patients with ALK-positive advanced NSCLC.
However, if Pfizer successfully receives approval as a first-line treatment, Xalkori’s sales would be boosted from their already successful, fourth-quarter revenues of $89 million.
Chief medical officer for Pfizer Oncology, Dr Mace Rothenberg, commented that the results of the clinical trial are important in that they demonstrate that “Xalkori is superior to standard chemotherapy doublet regimens in prolonging survival without progression as first-line treatment.”
Rothenberg added that the two late-stage clinical trials “collectively establish Xalkori as a standard of care in both the first and second-line setting for patients with ALK-positive advanced NSCLC.”
Tony Mok from the Chinese University of Hong Kong commented that the data from the new clinical study highlights “the importance of not only testing a tissue specimen for the presence of biomarkers at the time of diagnosis in all patients with advanced stage NSCLC, but actually having those results in hand before determining the most appropriate treatment option.”
Mok added that “it is clear that a multidisciplinary collaborative approach to molecular testing is required in order to deliver those results on time, which in fact is the foundation of personalised medicine in lung cancer.”