Source: DGNews  |  Posted 9 years ago

By Adrian Burton

NICE, FRANCE -- October 23, 2002 -- Adding ZD 1839 (Iressa) to standard chemotherapy regimens offers no clinical benefit in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the combined results of two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trials reported here October 21st at the 27th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology.

Earlier studies (the IDEAL trials) had shown that ZD 1839 (an inhibitor of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase) has an extremely promising activity profile when used as monotherapy.

"It was clear to all of us in the field that we had reached a plateau in the therapy of metastatic lung cancer," said Dr. David Johnson, Deputy Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tennessee, United States. "When four of the most popular chemotherapy regimens in the world were recently compared, none emerged as superior. We thought that adding a third drug [Iressa] to some of these doublets might be a useful strategy. We hoped we might see an improvement."

The 2130 patients enrolled in the trials had grade