AstraZeneca (AZ) has received two separate recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for use of its lung cancer drugs Tagrisso (osimertinib) and Imfinzi (durvalumab) in NHS patients across England and Wales.
Tagrisso has been recommended for use as an adjuvant treatment following complete resection in adults with stage 1B to 3A non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumours express epidermal growth factor (EGFR) exon 19 deletions or exon 21 substitution mutations.
Meanwhile, Imfinzi (durvalumab) has been recommended for use in combination with etoposide plus either carboplatin or cisplatin to treat adults with untreated extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC).
Approximately 49,200 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK every year. NSCLC is the most common form of the disease, accounting for around 85% of cases, while SCLC represents approximately 15% of all diagnoses.
NICE’s decision on Tagrisso was based on positive results from the late-stage ADAURA trial, in which treatment with the drug after surgery reduced the relative risk of disease recurrence or death by 83% compared to placebo in patients with stage 2 to 3A EGFR-mutated NSCLC.
Survival without disease recurrence at two years was 90% for the Tagrisso cohort and 44% for placebo and, among patients with stage 1B to 3A disease, 89% of those being treated with AZ’s drug were alive and disease-free at 24 months compared to 52% in the placebo group.
Results from the phase 3 CASPIAN trial supported the health technology assessment agency’s recommendation of Imfinzi.
A two-year follow-up analysis of the study showed that first-line treatment with Imfinzi plus platinum chemotherapy demonstrated significant and clinically meaningful improvements in overall survival in patients with extensive-stage SCLC versus chemotherapy alone, and updated results from the trial showed that the Imfinzi combination reduced the risk of death by 29% compared with chemotherapy alone at three years.
Tom Keith-Roach, president, AZ UK, said: “This is fantastic news for lung cancer patients. We are proud that these decisions by NICE mean we’ve had 28 positive recommendations by NICE and the Scottish Medicines Consortium since 2021 across multiple cancer types and stages.”
The latest recommendations come less than two weeks after the company’s Lynparza (olaparib) was recommended by NICE to treat adults with HER2-negative, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer with germline BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations after chemotherapy.