The TGA has approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in combination with bevacizumab (Avastin), and chemotherapy (paclitaxel and carboplatin), for the first-line treatment of adult patients with metastatic non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The immunotherapy-chemotherapy combination is indicated for patients with EGFR mutant or ALK-positive NSCLC, after failure of appropriate targeted therapies.
The new approval was based on results from the phase 3 IMpower150 study, which showed improvements in progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with atezolizumab plus bevacizumab plus carboplatin plus paclitaxel (ABCP) versus the standard-of-care bevacizumab plus carboplatin plus paclitaxel (BCP) in chemotherapy-naive patients.
In that study, the rate of progression-free survival at 12 months was twice as high with ABCP as with BCP (36.5% vs. 18.0%) and the rate of objective response higher (63.5% vs. 48.0%) with ABCP than with BCP.
Median overall survival among the patients who had a wild-type genotype was 19.2 months vs. 14.7 months for the ABCP vs standard of care group (hazard ratio for death, 0.78).