A study co-led by investigators at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center shows promising results for a drug that treats patients with a rare genetic type of early-stage lung cancer, researchers said Sunday.
The study, funded by Eli Lilly and Company, indicated that the targeted cancer drug selpercatinib can significantly reduce the risk of lung cancer returning in patients with a rare genetic subtype of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), potentially offering a new treatment option to help keep the disease from coming back after standard therapy.
The international phase 3 clinical trial, called LIBRETTO-432, found that after two years, 92% of patients with stage II-IIIA RET fusion-positive NSCLC who received selpercatinib after standard treatment were alive without their cancer returning, compared with 61% of patients who received a placebo.
Overall, the treatment reduced the risk of cancer recurrence or death by 83%.
The results were shared Sunday during the Plenary Session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting by Dr. Jonathan Goldman, health sciences clinical professor in the Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Even when patients with early-stage RET-positive lung cancer undergo surgery and other standard treatments with curative intent, many still face the possibility that their cancer will return,” Goldman said. “These findings show that a targeted therapy drug can dramatically reduce that risk and may represent an important new treatment approach for patients with this rare subtype of lung cancer.”
RET fusion-positive lung cancer is a rare subtype of NSCLC caused by abnormal rearrangements in the RET gene and occurs in approximately 1% to 2% of patients with the disease.