A double-barreled cancer immunotherapy extended the lives of people with lung cancer in a closely watched trial that’s viewed as important for gauging the potential impact of the drug, known as ivonescimab, as well as others like it.
Presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting Sunday, the findings come from a study testing ivonescimab in patients newly diagnosed with advanced, non-small cell lung cancer. Though run only in China, the study is a proxy for a global trial that could be worth tens of billions of dollars to the drug’s developers, Akeso and Summit Therapeutics. Like that global study, the China trial is testing an ivonescimab-chemotherapy combination against the kind of immunotherapy-chemo regimen that’s standard care for many new patients.
Last year, Akeso and Summit revealed that the ivonescimab regimen reduced the risk of disease progression by 40% when compared to chemo and an immunotherapy called Tevimbra. But they hadn’t yet disclosed whether the drug regimen extended lives, the gold standard for a cancer medicine.
Success in that objective carries implications not only for Akeso and Summit, but many others developing medicines like ivonescimab, which are known as “PD-1/VEGF inhibitors” because of the two proteins they target. These drugs have shown the potential to top widely used immunotherapies like Keytruda, sparking hope that they may become future cornerstones of cancer care. But modest results in some studies have stirred debate about their additive benefits.
