Sangeetha Palakurthi on FDA Approval of Atezolizumab in NSCLC

Sangeetha Palakurthi, PhD, head of the Cancer Biology and Pharmacology Group at the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the FDA approval of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for the treatment of patients with non—small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The approval is based on multiple clinical trials, the largest being the phase III OAK trial, which was presented at the 2016 ESMO Congress. In the study, atezolizumab reduced the risk of death by 26% compared with docetaxel in patients with advanced NSCLC following the failure of platinum-based chemotherapy. The median overall survival was improved by 4.2 months with the PD-L1 inhibitor versus chemotherapy. The survival benefit with atezolizumab was observed regardless of PD-L1 status or histology.