The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a new lung cancer pill from AstraZeneca after its two-year clinical trial following its promising results against non-small-cell lung cancer.
Similar to what other lung cancer pill does, AZD9291 directly targets the T790M gene mutation that is responsible for killing the tumors. This is the only known medicine approved by FDA to be used to positive metastatic EGFR T790M mutation or the non-small-cell lung cancer.
The drug that will be sold as Tagrisso comes in an 80-milligram pill that will be consumed once a day. Although the exact price has not been rolled out yet, a company representative revealed that this would be "comparable to other oral cancer therapies."
Richard Pazdur from FDA's center for drug evaluation and research stated that the Tagrisso provided a "significant effect on reducing tumour size in over half of patients who were treated." AstraZeneca SEO Pascal Soriot said, "The FDA approval of TAGRISSO marks an important milestone for lung cancer patients who urgently need new treatment options."
This new promising drug hopes to combat the leading cause of mortality among patients with cancer. The prevalence of lung cancer exceeds the total number of cases and death rates of colorectal, breast and prostate cancers combined. Moreover, the deadly lung cancer only offers patients a 20 percent chance of survival if diagnosed within five years.
Despite analysts' predictions that Tagrisso sales will be dragged down to $1.1 billion by more advanced treatment options in the next five years, AstraZeneca remains positive that they will earn at least $3 billion in one year.
The drug has been given approval after two and a half years of doing human clinical study. This is because of the positive reviews and feedbacks received from prominent countries like Japan, United States and Europe.
