Lung, bladder cancer show promising results with Roche's new drug

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Roche, world's biggest manufacturer of cancer medications, announced successful results in two different tests for Atezolizumab in lung and bladder cancer patients.

The company completed its phase 2 study of the immunotherapy drug, which targeted advanced or metastatic bladder cancer, Reuters reports. The test revealed that the drug reduced tumors by 27% in patients with medium and high levels of PD-L1, a protein that enables cancer to evade the immune system.

Roche also announced that in another phase 2 trial targeting advanced non-small cell lung cancer, those who were medicated with Atezolizumab lived 7.7 months longer than those who received chemotherapy. The drug also decreased tumor size up to 27% in patients whose lung cancer had progressed with other treatments and had the highest levels of PD-L1.

Bloomberg reports that Roche will present the results of the study at the European Cancer Congress in Vienna, and is hoping to achieve quick regulatory approval.

"We plan to submit these results to global health authorities to bring this potential new option to people as soon as possible," Sandra Hornung, Roche's chief medical officer, said in a statement. The US Food and Drug Administration recognized Roche's Atezolizumab in February as a "breakthrough therapy status" and called it "first new therapy for bladder cancer in 30 years."

According to Thomas Buechele, Roche's head of global medical affairs in hematology and oncology, "Durable responses are not something you currently see in bladder cancer with chemotherapy."

Bristol-Myers, Merck & Co. and AstraZeneca Plc are also developing drugs to battle cancer tumors through harnessing the immune system, but Roche plans to submit Atezolizumab as early as 2016.

"One of the reasons we are so excited about this data set is this is a really tough cancer for which there really haven't been many improvements, beyond very difficult chemotherapy for patients, for about 30 years," Hornung told Bloomberg.

Roche's plans for the drug is to enable it to prevent PD-L1 from binding to receptors on the surface of cancer-fighting T cells, and thereby activating these cells to fight the tumor. Dr. Martin Reck, chief oncology physician at Germany's Grosshansdorf Hospital said, "It is to be expected that Atezolizumab, like other PD-1 and PD-L1 antibodies, will substantially change treatment strategies of patients."

According to the CDC, "More people in the United States die from lung cancer than any other type of cancer," and in 2012, 210,828 people in America were diagnosed with lung cancer. The American Cancer Society also reports that this year, about 74,000 new cases of bladder cancer had been diagnosed, and 16,000 deaths have been attributed to the disease.