Posted by Michael Wonder on 19 Oct 2016
FDA approves Genentech’s cancer immunotherapy Tecentriq (atezolizumab) for people with a specific type of metastatic lung cancer
18 October 2016 - First and only anti-PDL1 cancer immunotherapy approved by the FDA for metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer.
Genentech today announced that the U.S. FDA approved Tecentriq (atezolizumab) for the treatment of people with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy, and have progressed on an appropriate FDA-approved targeted therapy if their tumour has EGFR or ALK gene abnormalities.
This approval is based on results from the randomised Phase III OAK and Phase II POPLAR studies. The largest study, OAK, showed that Tecentriq helped people in the overall study population live a median of 13.8 months, 4.2 months longer than those treated with docetaxel chemotherapy (median overall survival: 13.8 vs. 9.6 months; HR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.63, 0.87). The study enrolled people regardless of their PD-L1 status and included both squamous and non-squamous disease types.
