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Successful trial results for Pfizer's lung cancer drug
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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A Pfizer drug has been shown to significantly slow cancer progression and improve survival rates in people with late-stage lung cancer, results show.
Lorlatinib, already approved and available under the brand name Lobrena in the US, has been tested in a clinical trial in hundreds of people with ALK-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
About half of the participants received lorlatinib, while the rest received crizotinib, an older drug.
After five years of follow-up, more than half of the patients treated with lorlatinib had no progression of their cancer.
"We're talking about patients with advanced metastatic disease, so this is a really unprecedented discovery," Pfizer's Despina Thomaidou told AFP.
Sixty percent of patients receiving lorlatinib, taken as a tablet once a day, were alive without disease progression after five years, compared with 8 percent on crizotinib.
"The risk of progression or death is reduced by 81 percent," Thomaidou added.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.
NSCLC accounts for more than 80 percent of lung cancer cases, and ALK-positive tumors account for approximately five percent of NSCLC cases, with approximately 72,000 new cases annually worldwide.
ALK-positive NSCLC most often affects younger patients and is largely unrelated to lifestyle factors such as smoking. It is also very aggressive – 25-40 percent of people with ALK-positive NSCLC develop brain metastases within the first two years.
Lorlatinib penetrates the blood-brain barrier better than previous generations of drugs, Thomaidou said, and works to suppress tumor mutations that cause resistance.
Side effects of lorlatinib included swelling, weight gain, and mental problems.
The results were published at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.