New Roche Drug Appears to Improve Upon Tecentriq in Lung Cancer

(Bloomberg) -- Adding an experimental new treatment from Roche Holding AG to the company’s lung cancer drug, Tecentriq, appeared to drive more responses than Tecentriq by itself, according to results of a mid-stage study.

With an additional six months of follow-up since the primary analysis, Roche’s tiragolumab plus Tecentriq shrank tumors for 37% of lung cancer patients while Tecentriq alone did the same for 21% of patients. Patients getting the combo lived 5.6 months on average before their disease progressed, compared to 3.9 months alone. The results had an average followup of nearly 11 months of follow-up and were released ahead of the virtual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.

Tecentriq is among a handful of immune-system-stimulating drugs jostling for dominance as a treatment of lung cancer, one of the most common and deadly types of cancer. Tiragolumab belongs to a new class of immunotherapies targeting certain T-cell proteins known as TIGIT.

Wall Street has suggested these medicines could be the next blockbuster cancer treatments, reaching as high as $10 billion in annual sales. The trial was in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, who tested positive for the presence of a protein in the patients’ tumors, called PD-L1.

For patients with a high expression of PD-L1, Merck & Co.’s top-selling drug Keytruda by itself has shown a response rate of nearly 45% while helping patients to live over 10 months before their disease progressed. Those “will probably be the most relevant numbers to beat,” Cowen analyst Steve Scala wrote in a note Tuesday. He expects patients to be followed for longer in results available at the meeting in late May. The latest tiragolumab results did not break out levels of expression of the protein.

Other companies are racing to develop drugs for the TIGIT target and the space has already sparked some deal interest. Arcus Biosciences Inc. is developing a new medicine, AB154, which may be what caught Gilead Sciences Inc.’s eye when, Bloomberg reported last month, the larger biotech was looking to secure a stake in Arcus. Compugen Ltd. and Beigene Ltd. are also working on their own therapies.

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