Extending the life of people with lung cancer

MILAN, Italy — Roche has released new data for its new investigational compound at the 35th European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress showing significant progress for people living with lung cancer.

“We are pleased to be able to share this new data in lung cancer regarding erlotinib and MetMAb here at ESMO,” said Richard Scheller, Ph.D., head of genentech research and early development (gRED).

“Lung cancer remains an area of high unmet medical need, and our new data with MetMAb is an example of how a targeted, personalized approach may help improve outcomes in this hard to treat disease,” Scheller said.

Preliminary results from a phase II study show that a combination of MetMAb, a unique monovalent antibody, with erlotinib nearly doubled the time people with high MET expressing non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) lived without their disease getting worse (progression-free survival or PFS) compared to placebo plus erlotinib. The median PFS was improved from 6.4 weeks to 12.4 weeks.

The phase II, randomized, multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled study evaluated the activity and safety of MetMAb plus erlotinib, versus placebo plus erlotinib in patients who had received prior treatment for advanced NSCLC.

Patients were stratified by the MET receptor expression in their tumor sample using immunohistochemistry (IHC), developed in collaboration with Ventana, a member of the Roche Group, and were categorized as MET-high or MET-low, according to a pre-defined scoring system.

The study also showed that as of the data cut date of June 8, 2010, the addition of MetMAb to erlotinib in patients whose tumors expressed high MET levels as assessed by IHC led to an improvement in overall survival (OS) compared to placebo plus erlotinib. The median OS was improved from 7.4 months to 7.7 months.

MetMAb treatment was generally well tolerated and no unexpected safety signals were observed.

The MET-high population represented 54 percent of the patients enrolled in the study. The full analysis of the phase II study will be presented at a medical meeting in the near future.