The addition of ChiMed’s c-MET inhibitor savolitinib to AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso (osimertinib) has been found to help patients with EGFR-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had developed resistance to prior EGFR-targeted therapies through MET-gene amplification.
At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting, the updated results showed that savolitinib in combination with Tagrisso was associated with an objective response rate (ORR) of 52% with 24 partial responses, while the median duration of response (DOR) was 7.1 months. In the second cohort, the combination yielded an ORR of 28%, with 12 partial responses, while the median DOR was 9.7 months.
Study author Lecia Sequist commented, “The study has shown efficacy of combination targeted therapy in a patient population for whom chemotherapy is the current primary treatment option. Overall the regimen was tolerable, though there was added toxicity with the combination of [Tagrisso] and savolitinib compared to [Tagrisso] given alone, and we saw that some patients discontinued treatment due to toxicity.”
The drug gained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for treating metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer with tumours with EGFR mutations back in 2018, based on results of the Phase III FLAURA trial, in which Tagrisso demonstrated median progression-free survival of 18.9 months versus 10.2 months for EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).
In 2016, AstraZeneca and China MediTech amended their 2011 agreement to jointly develop and commercialise savolitinib to include multiple c-Met-driven solid tumour indications such as NSCLC.
