Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis said in a statement Monday that one of these currently being investigated lung cancer treatments had failed to meet its primary goals in a phase 3 study.
Called canakinumab, this treatment, used in these trials in combination with the cancer drug pembrolizumab and chemotherapy, did not demonstrate statistically significant differences in terms of survival or progression-free survival in patients with of the disease having received these two treatments, plus a placebo, indicates the laboratory.
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These phase III trials called Canopy-1 studied this treatment in patients with locally advanced or metastatic “non-small cell” lung cancer who had not yet received previous treatments.
Potential improvements in some subgroups
The data from these trials, however, showed potentially clinically significant improvements in certain prespecified patient subgroups, both in terms of survival and progression-free survival, added the Swiss group which will continue to analyze the data. .
Lung cancer is one of the most prevalent forms of cancer worldwide with two million new cases diagnosed each year, Novartis said.
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There are two main types of lung cancer, with small cell cancer on the one hand and so-called “non-small cell” cancer on the other, accounting for around 85% of diagnosed lung cancers.