Summary
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Amgen’s therapy for patients with the most deadly form of lung cancer.
Amgen, a biotech company, has created a new drug called Tarlatamab to treat a type of lung cancer known as small cell lung cancer. This cancer is hard to treat and usually comes back after chemotherapy.
The FDA quickly approved Tarlatamab because it helped some patients in a study live longer without their cancer getting worse. The drug works by targeting a protein on cancer cells and getting the immune system to attack them.
Tarlatamab will give patients with small cell lung cancer a new treatment option.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Amgen’s therapy for patients with the most deadly form of lung cancer.
The agency cleared the drug, which will be marketed under the name Imdelltra, as a second or later line of treatment for people with advanced small cell lung cancer. That means patients can take the drug if their cancer progresses while on or after trying one other form of treatment, which is typically a type of chemotherapy. Amgen’s drug is also known by its generic name tarlatamab.
In clinical trials, Amgen’s drug has been shown to reduce tumor growth and help people with small-cell lung cancer live significantly longer.
Of the more than 2.2 million patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer worldwide each year, small-cell lung cancer comprises 15%, or 330,000, of those cases, Amgen said. Around 80% to 85% of people with small-cell lung cancer are diagnosed with an advanced stage of the disease, according to a study published in the Journal of Cancer.
