Patients with incurable lung cancer could see their lives extended by several years thanks to a drug hailed as the “best treatment ever created” for the disease.
About six in 10 patients receiving the daily tablet treated with lorlatinib survived for five years without their cancer progressing, compared with just eight percent who received standard care.
Scientists said the results were “off the charts” after a trial found it improved survival rates for the longest time ever recorded.
Researchers who presented the findings at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago said it was impossible to say how long it prolonged life because most still live without progression.
The study involved 296 people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer caused by a mutation of the ALK gene, an aggressive form of the disease that often spreads to the brain.
About six in 10 daily tablet patients treated with lorlatinib survived for five years without their cancer progressing, compared with just eight percent who received standard care.
Typically non-smokers and younger than the average lung cancer patient, around 350 people in the UK are diagnosed with ALK-positive lung cancer each year.
Experts hope lortlatinib will be approved as a first-line NHS treatment for these patients within months.
Developed by Pfizer, lorlatinib works by binding to the ALK protein on the surface of cells, blocking tumor growth and “stopping cancer in its tracks.”
Dr. David Spigel, ASCO’s chief scientific officer, said the industry “hasn’t seen anything like this.”
He said: ‘The results with lorlatinib are the best we have ever seen.
“We just haven’t seen results like that in oncology as often, let alone in non-small cell lung cancer.
“These are among the best results we’ve seen in advanced disease in any setting…a really important step forward in lung cancer care.”
The study was led by the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, and included 296 people with advanced ALK-positive lung cancer, and a quarter of the patients had already seen the cancer spread to the brain.
Half received lorlatinib while the others received an existing drug called crizotinib, designed to work in a similar way.
Over five years, 60 percent of the lorlatinib group experienced no progression in their cancer, which scientists said was “unheard of.”
These results were compared with progression-free survival lasting only nine months on average elsewhere.
The patients had brain scans every eight weeks, and this showed that lorlatinib prevented the cancer from spreading to the brain and stopped the growth of any existing brain tumor.
Lead author Dr Benjamin Solomon said: “Importantly, around a quarter of patients with ALK+ lung cancer have brain metastases present at diagnosis and progressive CNS involvement remains a major concern. for these patients.
“This is the longest progression-free survival ever recorded in ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer and, indeed, to our knowledge, of any targeted lung cancer therapy to date.”
The drug has been available on the NHS since 2020, but only for limited use in patients who have exhausted all other treatment options, and fewer than 100 people receive it a year.
The results now mean that medical regulator NICE will reassess lorlatinib to provide a new standard first-line treatment for patients with ALK-positive lung cancer.
Debra Montague, chair of ALK Positive Lung Cancer UK, said: “Lung cancer often spreads to the brain and Lorlatinib is very successful in stopping it.
“The drug is not yet used as a first-line treatment in England, but we hope that, following these results, it will gain approval.
“ALK-positive lung cancer usually affects patients who have never smoked, and this drug increases the chances of extending life by many years.”
Professor Charles Swanton, Chief Medical Officer at Cancer Research UK, said: “The groundbreaking results show that more than half of patients taking Lorlatinib did not have their disease progress after five years.
‘In contrast, more than half of the patients taking crizotinib experienced disease progression after just nine months.
“Research like this is vital to finding new ways to treat lung cancer and helping more people survive longer.”