Novel agent shows promise for non-small cell lung cancer

by Bruce Sylvester – Researchers report that an experimental cancer drug which has shown efficacy in  treating melanoma also shows promise  in treating non-small cell lung cancer, a leading cause of cancer death among men and women worldwide.

Preliminary findings from a Phase 1B study of the  drug, called MK-3475, were presented  on Oct. 29, 2013 at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Sydney, Australia.

“These are early results, but we are very encouraged by what we’ve seen so far with this drug,” Edward Garon, MD. director of thoracic oncology at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles, California. “Lung cancer patients who have disease that has grown after two prior therapies do not have many options, and we are cautiously optimistic that this might be a treatment that improves their chances in the future.”

As background, the researchers noted that some cancer cells evade detection by the immune system by expressing a protein called PD-L1, which interacts with the protein PD-1 to prevent the immune system from identifying the presence of  cancer cells. Merck’s investigative agent MK-3475, an anti-PD-1 immunotherapy drug, allows the immune system to detect the cancer and to activate T cells to attack cancer cells.

The study enrolled 38 subjects with non-small cell lung cancer who had been treated unsuccessfully. The subjects received MK-3475 every three weeks.

The investigators reported that 24 percent responded to the drug, with tumor shrinkage. Median overall survival rate was 51 weeks. For responders, median response duration (average time that the tumors remained shrunk) had not been reached at the time of the data analysis, so it was at least 62 weeks.

Based on this data, the investigators are enrolling subjects for a Phase 2/3 trial comparing two different doses of MK-3475 to standard chemotherapy.

Most common drug-related side effects were rash (21 percent), skin itching (18 percent), fatigue (16 percent), diarrhea (13 percent) and joint pain (11 percent). Most side effects, were low grade.

According to the American Cancer Society non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer, representing approximately 85 percent of all lung cancer diagnoses.