The immunotherapy drug durvalumab (Imfinzi) helped people with early-stage small cell lung cancer live longer, according to initial results from a large clinical trial. Durvalumab is a type of immunotherapy called an
immune checkpoint inhibitor.
The standard initial treatment for early-stage (also called limited-stage) small cell lung cancer—cancer that is confined to one lung or one side of the chest—is chemotherapy and radiation given at the same time. Although this treatment tends to work well at first, the cancer often comes back quickly, at which point it has typically spread throughout the body.
“There really have not been any major advances in the treatment of
limited-stage small cell lung cancer for several decades,” said the study’s leader, David Spigel, M.D., of Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee.
In the new trial, dubbed ADRIATIC, more than 500 people with limited-stage small cell lung cancer who had finished chemotherapy and radiation were randomly assigned to receive durvalumab or a placebo for up to 2 years.
People who received durvalumab stayed in remission longer and lived substantially longer than those treated with placebo. Three years after starting the treatment, 57% of people in the durvalumab group were still aliveExit Disclaimer, compared with 48% in the placebo group, Dr. Spigel reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology on June 2.
“The ADRIATIC trial is a landmark study and provides a new
standard of care for patients with early-stage small cell lung cancer,” said Lauren Byers, M.D., professor of thoracic head and neck medical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, at a press briefing where the study was discussed. Dr. Byers was not involved in the trial.
The findings are “definitely practice changing,” said Anish Thomas, M.D., of NCI’s
Center for Cancer Research, who studies small cell lung cancer but wasn’t involved in the new trial.
“This is really encouraging for patients as well as people who are working on this cancer,” Dr. Thomas said.