Lung cancer deaths cut in half with AstraZeneca pill, large trial finds

A once-daily pill from drugmaker AstraZeneca cut deaths in half among a subset of early-stage lung cancer patients who had undergone surgery, according to new clinical trial results.

The findings were presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The data is the first to show how a targeted treatment for early-stage lung cancer impacts survival, said Dr. Roy Herbst, the trial's principal investigator and deputy director at Yale Cancer Center. The drug, called osimertinib and sold under the name Tagrisso, is directed at a specific receptor that helps cancer cells grow.

“I think we’re curing some patients," Herbst said. "We’re really showing progress in lung cancer like never before.”

The trial results were "about twice as good as we expected," Herbst added.