Johnson & Johnson has pulled ahead of rival AstraZeneca Plc in a race to dominate the blockbuster market for lung cancer treatment, but data from a forthcoming study could quickly shake up the competition again.
J&J’s combination therapy helped patients live significantly longer than those who received Astra’s Tagrisso, according to detailed data from a head-to-head study presented Wednesday at the European Lung Cancer Congress in Paris. Expanding on results disclosed in January, researchers said they expect J&J’s treatment to extend patients’ median survival by a year or more compared to Astra’s drug, the current standard of care.
While J&J’s results represent a sizable improvement, the caveat is that Astra is awaiting survival data of its own from a study combining Tagrisso with standard chemotherapy. Those data, which could come later this year, threaten to upend the standard of care for the world’s most deadly cancer yet again and reverse J&J’s victory.
For now, the results establish J&J’s treatment as clearly superior on the crucial measure of survival, said Edgardo Santos, a physician at Florida Society of Clinical Oncology. That could change if Astra’s combination equals or exceeds that benefit, “but until that happens, you need to give the patient the best of the best,” said Santos, who wasn’t involved in J&J’s study.
Astra’s work on its own combination treatment is “strengthening Tagrisso as the market leader in this setting today while developing tomorrow’s breakthroughs to help patients who progress on treatment,” Dave Fredrickson, head of the company’s oncology business, said in a statement to Bloomberg. Tagrisso provides patients with “a well-tolerated, oral therapy that allows for convenient, at-home treatment,” he said.
One half of J&J’s treatment is Lazcluze, a pill that, like Astra’s Tagrisso, blocks a cancer-associated protein called EGFR. J&J combines it with Rybrevant, which blocks both EGFR and another cancer-linked protein called MET.
The pairing led to more side effects than Tagrisso alone in the study of more than 1,000 patients, including elevated rates of reactions at the site of injection, fingernail infections and rashes. A separate J&J study showed those side effects could be decreased with antibiotics and steroids. The company is also developing a version of Rybrevant that can be administered through a small needle under the skin instead of a five-hour infusion.
First approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2015, Tagrisso is the dominant lung cancer treatment on the market with nearly $7 billion in annual revenue. J&J’s therapy won US approval last year based on data showing it delayed cancer progression more than Tagrisso alone.
