September 19, 2020: “Results from a prespecified exploratory analysis of the positive ADAURA Phase III trial showed AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso (osimertinib) demonstrated a clinically meaningful improvement in central nervous system (CNS) disease-free survival (DFS) in the adjuvant treatment of patients with early-stage (IB, II and IIIA) epidermal growth factor receptor-mutated (EGFRm) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), after complete tumour resection.
While up to 30% of all patients with NSCLC may be diagnosed early enough to have potentially curative surgery, disease recurrence is still common in early-stage disease.
CNS recurrence, when cancer spreads to the brain, is a frequent complication of EGFRm NSCLC and these patients have an especially poor prognosis.
Results were presented on 19 September 2020 during the Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020 (abstract #LBA1) and simultaneously published with the primary results in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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This analysis showed that fewer patients treated with Tagrisso in the adjuvant setting had recurrence events or deaths compared to placebo (11% versus 46%).
Among patients whose cancer recurred, 38% of those treated with Tagrisso had a metastatic recurrence compared to 61% of patients on placebo.
Tagrisso showed an 82% reduction in the risk of CNS recurrence or death (based on a hazard ratio [HR] of 0.18; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.10-0.33; p<0.0001). Median CNS DFS was not yet reached in either arm.
In a post-hoc analysis, the estimated probability of observing disease recurrence in the brain at 18 months for patients treated with Tagrisso was less than 1% versus 9% for placebo among patients who had not experienced another type of recurrence.
On the primary endpoint of DFS in patients with Stage II and IIIA disease, Tagrisso in the adjuvant setting reduced the risk of disease recurrence or death by 83% (HR 0.17; 95% CI 0.12-0.23; p<0.0001).
Masahiro Tsuboi, MD, PhD, director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital East in Japan, and a principal investigator in the ADAURA Phase III trial, said: “It’s time to change the notion that treatment for early-stage EGFR-mutated lung cancer ends after surgery, since recurrence rates are still very high even after adjuvant chemotherapy.
These new data showing low rates of recurrence, particularly in the brain, combined with the remarkable disease-free survival benefit, clearly demonstrate that Tagrisso provides patients with more time living cancer-free.”
José Baselga, Executive Vice President, Oncology R&D, said: “Once lung cancer has spread to the brain, outcomes are typically devastating for patients. We are now seeing Tagrisso expanding on its proven efficacy in treating progression in the brain in the metastatic setting as a result of its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.
The striking new data show that Tagrisso prevents the development of brain metastases in patients with early disease and reinforce that this medicine is truly transformative for patients with EGFR-mutated lung cancer.”
Tagrisso should become the standard of care in the adjuvant setting, just as it is for patients with metastatic disease around the world.”
