New immunotherapies push SCLC market in USA over $1 billion, says analyst

The standard of care for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) had been unchanged for over 20 years, with platinum-based chemotherapy being the treatment of choice for extensive-stage (ES) disease.

However, in 2018, the approval of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (NYSE: BMY) Opdivo (nivolumab) in the second-line setting marked the beginning of the immunotherapy era for ES-SCLC.

Sakis Paliouras, oncology and hematology analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved [Roche (ROG: SIX) subsidiary] Genentech’s Tecentriq (atezolizumab) in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for ES-SCLC based on a 30% reduction in risk of death observed in the Phase III IMpower133 trial. This approval established Tecentriq as the standard of care and transformed the treatment paradigm by including immunotherapy agents in both the first and second line. In June 2019, Merck’s [NYSE: MRK] Keytruda (pembrolizumab) also received FDA approval as single agent for the treatment of patients who had progressed on more than one other lines of therapy, claiming a share of the second-line market.”