Eli Lilly drug prolongs survival in large lung cancer trial

Eli Lilly and Co's cancer drug ramucirumab modestly extended survival in a large, late-stage study of patients with advanced, nonsmall cell lung cancer who had relapsed following initial treatment, according to data presented on Saturday. In the 1,253-patient trial, those who received ramucirumab and the common chemotherapy drug docetaxel on average lived for 10.5 months compared with 9.1 months for those who got only the chemotherapy. While the difference amounts to only about six weeks, it was deemed by researchers to be statistically significant and clinically meaningful due to the extremely poor survival prognosis for advanced lung cancer that comes back following initial treatment. "This is the first treatment in approximately a decade to improve the outcome of patients" whose cancer has returned, Dr. Maurice Perol, the study's lead investigator and head of thoracic oncology at Cancer Research Center of Lyon in France, said in a statement.



via Health News Headlines - Yahoo News http://ift.tt/T10U0b