By Helena Smolak


AstraZeneca said its experimental drug for non-small cell lung cancer, jointly developed with Japan's Daiichi Sankyo, showed improvement in progression-free survival in its latest trial, moving objective of replacing chemotherapy as a cancer treatment.

The British-Swedish pharma giant said Monday that the trial results favored the antibody-drug conjugate--a method that precisely targets cancer cells--datopotamab deruxtecan compared to chemotherapy in relation to the length of time that a patient can live without the disease progressing. However, the results didn't reach statistical significance.

"Datopotamab deruxtecan is the only investigational therapy to show a clinically meaningful survival improvement in patients with previously treated nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer versus docetaxel, which has long been unsurpassed in this post-targeted treatment and post-immunotherapy setting." Susan Galbraith, ncology R&D at AstraZeneca said.


Write to Helena Smolak at helena.smolak@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-27-24 0740ET