Bristol Myers Squibb Bags US FDA Approval to Treat Lung Cancer

Bristol Myers Squibb announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Augtyro (repotrectinib) for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic ROS1-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Administered as an oral therapy Augtyro is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) targeting ROS1 oncogenic fusions.The approval is based on the TRIDENT-1 study, an open-label, single-arm, phase 1/2 trial that evaluated Augtyro in TKI-naïve and TKI-pretreated patients.2 In TKI-naïve patients (n=71), the primary endpoint of objective response rate (ORR), defined as the percentage of people treated within a certain period of time whose tumour size decreased (partial response) or who no longer have signs of cancer (complete response),was 79% (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 68 to 88), as per pharmabiz.The median duration of response (mDOR) was 34.1 months. Among patients pretreated with one prior ROS1 TKI and no prior chemotherapy (n=56), the ORR was 38% (95% CI: 25 to 52) and the mDOR was 14.8 months. Among those who had measurable central nervous system (CNS) metastases at baseline, responses in intracranial lesions were observed in 7 of 8 TKI-naïve patients (n=71) and 5 of 12 of those who were TKI-pretreated (n=56).“New treatment options continue to be needed for patients with ROS1 fusion-positive NSCLC that support important clinical goals including achieving durable therapeutic responses,” said Jessica J. Lin, MD, TRIDENT-1 primary investigator and attending physician at the Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Based on the data we have seen in the TRIDENT-1 trial, repotrectinib has the potential to become a new standard of care option for patients with locally advanced or metastatic ROS1 fusion-positive lung cancer.”