Roche drug cocktail doubles chance of holding lung cancer at bay

Zurich

ADDING Roche's immunotherapy Tecentriq to older drugs doubled the percentage of lung cancer patients who survived a year without their disease advancing, an outcome that some experts labelled as unprecedented.

Thirty-seven per cent of patients in a closely watched clinical trial who got Tecentriq, Avastin and chemotherapy reached the one-year mark without their cancer progressing, according to data released on Thursday. For patients getting only Avastin and chemotherapy, that fell to 18 per cent.