Potential advances in the treatment of lung cancer will be a major focus as the American Society of Clinical Oncology gets under way in Chicago on Friday. In particular, ImClone Systems will unveil long-awaited results from a pivotal trial of its Erbitux drug, in combination with chemotherapy, in patients with advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer, Reuters writes.

The drugmaker has already said its Flex study met its main goal of boosting survival, but what is not clear is how much longer patients were shown to live. “The Flex study will be one of the most important presentations at ASCO,” Roy Herbst, chief of thoracic oncology at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, tells Reuters. “Lung cancer doctors and patients would like to know more details.”

The Chicago meeting, which is expected to attract more than 25,000 cancer specialists, will also be a forum for new research and is likely to influence oncologists, who currently have only one non-chemotherapy option for initial treatment of lung cancer - Genentech’s Avastin, an antibody that works by cutting off blood supply to tumors.

The trial under which Avastin was approved excluded certain patient groups and showed the drug prolonged survival by about two months. But the Erbitux lung cancer trial enrolled a wider group of patients. Results of another Phase III Avastin trial released last month showed the drug did not help lung cancer patients live longer, but did help keep the disease from progressing.

Avastin research to be presented at ASCO examined safety in patients excluded from previous trials - including those with lung cancer that has spread to the brain.

Conference attendees will also see data on how best to treat lung cancer if the disease begins to progress despite the first round of treatment. Trial results released earlier this month showed that patients with advanced lung cancer who took Lilly’s Alimta after finishing a normal course of chemo lived cancer-free for two months, or 40 percent longer than those who took a placebo.

Those findings, as well as the Erbitux data, may have implications for OSI Pharmaceuticals’ Tarceva, which is approved for nonsmall cell lung cancer patients previously treated with one or more rounds of chemotherapy. Results from Tarceva trials as an earlier-stage lung cancer treatment are expected later this year.

The ASCO conference will also be the stage for numerous presentations of early clinical data for a range of lung cancer compounds, including Exelixis’ XL647, which is being studied in patients with nonsmall cell lung cancer who have relapsed following treatment with a targeted cancer drug like Tarceva.

Source: Reuters