A treatment against lung cancer reduces the risk of death by 51%
A new treatment against lung cancer manages to reduce the risk of death of the patient by 51%, according to the American Association for Cancer Research.
The new therapy, consisting of the combination of a drug with chemotherapy, showed to reduce more than half the chances of death compared with the treatment that only uses chemotherapy for patients with non-squamous metastases and non-small cells.
The drug, tested by the Merck company in 616 patients, is known as Keytruda and the results obtained could mean "a change in the practices" of immunotherapies against this type of cancer, according to Leena Gandhi, professor of Medicine at the University of New York
The presentation of the achievements of this treatment coincided in parallel with that of the results of another immunotherapy based on a drug known as Opdivo, from Bristol Myers Squibb.
This, applied along with other medications, was able to reduce the progression of cancer or the risk of death by 42% compared to chemotherapy in patients with non-small cells and with high level of mutation.
Both results far exceeded expectations, which predicted a reduction of a minimum of 30%, according to analysts quoted by CNBC.
These two methods were tested in patients who had not yet tried other therapies, but in whom the cancer had already spread.
In this sense, Matthew Hellmann, expert of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, recalled that lung cancer is still the most cause deaths in the world.
According to the National Cancer Institute, a total of 234,000 Americans will be diagnosed with this disease this year and 154,000 will die from it.
The presentation of the results has had opposite effects in both companies, since while Merck's effectiveness led it to rise by 2.6% in the stock market at noon today, Bristol-Myers fell 8.3%, according to the report. Bloomberg.