An anticancer drug developed by Sichuan Biokin Pharmaceutical took centre stage in a late-breaking oral presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Madrid last week.
Researchers said the drug, iza-bren, showed a significant advantage over platinum-based chemotherapy in a phase 3 randomised, double-blind clinical trial conducted at 73 hospitals in China and involving 432 patients with advanced lung cancer.
The median progression-free survival (PFS) – the length of time a patient lives with a disease without the condition getting worse during or after treatment – for participants who received chemotherapy but not iza-bren in the study was 5.7 months.