Antibody Hinders EGFR Lung Cancers

Antibody hinders EGFR lung cancer

Anitbody hinders EGFR lung cancer: Johnson & Johnson’s EGFR-MET biospecific antibody is padding its case ahead of a potential FDA nod. The drug shrank tumors in 40% of lung cancer patients with a rare EGFR mutation and curbed tumor growth in nearly three-quarters of patients.

The phase 2 data, presented virtually at the World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), come from 81 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR exon 20 insertions. The patients’ cancer had spread beyond the lungs or couldn’t be treated with surgery and had gotten worse despite taking platinum chemotherapy.

Anitbody hinders EGFR lung cancer by shrinking tumors.

Of the 40% of patients who saw their tumors shrink, three patients (4%) saw all signs of cancer eliminated. Patients responded to treatment for a median of 11 months. The treatment staved off progression for 8.3 months and kept patients alive for nearly two years.

Although EGFR mutations are common, exon 20 insertions—where one or more nucleotide bases are inserted in a segment of DNA called exon 20—are rarer than the so-called classical activating mutations that comprise up to 85% of the EGFR mutations seen in lung cancer, said Joshua Sabari, M.D., of New York University Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, who presented the data Thursday.

“Oftentimes, those patients do not respond to the standard third-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The standard of care in this population remains platinum doublet chemotherapy,” Sabari said, adding that these patients don’t fare too well on chemo, either. “The median progression-free survival is about seven to nine months—not great—and the objective response rate is about 35% or so.”