First-line lung cancer approval for Roche drug in Canada

14 June 2018

Health Canada has approved a drug from Roche (ROG: SIX) as a monotherapy for the first-line treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Alecensaro (alectinib), which is marketed as Alecensa outside Canada, has been approved based on results from the Phase III ALEX study showing that it reduced the risk of disease progression or death by more than half compared to crizotinib, the current standard of care.

Study data also showed that, compared to crizotinib, the Roche treatment reduced the risk of tumors spreading to, or growing in, the brain or CNS by 84%.

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