Dana-Farber's Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, provides insight on DESTINY-Lung01 trial in lung cancer highlighted at ESMO 2021.
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So this is a study for a rare subset of lung cancer, lung cancers that have an activating mutation in the her two gene. And this is found in about 3-4% of patients with non small cell lung cancer. And this is a subset of lung cancer for where we do not currently have an approved targeted therapy, unlike for many of the other subsets of non small cell lung cancer. So in the current study, the drug trade stews mob Derek's T can, which is a hurt to antibody drug conjugate, was evaluated in patients with her two meeting lung cancer who had been previously treated with various types of systemic therapies. Uh And the study demonstrated uh the a fair degree of efficacy With over a 50% confirmed response rate and and a median progression free survival of 8.2 months. Now, if we look at this in context with other P efforts that have taken place in terms of uh targeted therapies for this patient population, most of those have demonstrated much lower response rate in a much shorter progression free survival. So this really stands out as a unique uh therapy and and and a very effective therapy for this subset. And uh and we're very excited about it and especially uh for our patients. Now, there are some side effects of uh this and the side effects that we are still learning about and how to best manage is interstitial lung disease. Uh And and sometimes that leads to discontinuation of the study drug. Um but again, the efficacy is uh beyond what we've seen with other ages to date.
