Roche drug cocktail doubles chance of holding lung cancer at bay

Adding Roche’s immunotherapy Tecentriq to older drugs doubled the percentage of lung cancer patients who survived a year without their disease advancing, an outcome some experts labeled unprecedented.

Thirty-seven percent of patients in a closely watched clinical trial who got Tecentriq, Avastin and chemotherapy reached the one-year mark without their cancer progressing (PFS), according to data released on Thursday.

For patients getting only Avastin and chemotherapy, that fell to 18 percent.

Roche’s November announcement that its Impower 150 trial had broadly succeeded in first-line lung cancer patients helped spur a one-day, $12 billion rally in the Basel-based drugmaker’s market capitalization.