The subheadline of this article gushed that this drug “tripled life expectancy,” the article quoted one expert gushing that it was “a light after a long time,” and another expert gushing that it “will be practice-changing.”
Then you read more carefully and see that the average recipient of the drug has a gain in life expectancy from about four and a half months without the drug to 14 months with the drug–in other words a gain of only roughly 10 months, and with the major side effect of cytokine syndrome.
This illustrates the discouraging side of many ballyhooed cancer advances, they amount to only months of added life, and the added life comes at the cost of major side effects.
(p. D4) The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday [May 16, 2024] approved an innovative new treatment for patients with a form of lung cancer. It is to be used only by patients who have exhausted all other options to treat small cell lung cancer, and have a life expectancy of four to five months.
The drug tarlatamab, or Imdelltra, made by the company Amgen, tripled patients’ life expectancy, giving them a median survival of 14 months after they took the drug. Forty percent of those who got the drug responded.
After decades with no real advances in treatments for small cell lung cancer, tarlatamab offers the first real hope, said Dr. Anish Thomas, a lung cancer specialist at the federal National Cancer Institute who was not involved in the trial.
“I feel it’s a light after a long time,” he added.
Dr. Timothy Burns, a lung cancer specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, said that the drug “will be practice-changing.”
(Dr. Burns was not an investigator in the study but has served on an Amgen advisory committee for a different drug.)
The drug, though, has a side effect that can be serious — cytokine release syndrome. It’s an overreaction of the immune system that can result in symptoms like a rash, a rapid heartbeat and low blood pressure.
For the full story see:
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 16, 2024 [sic], and has the title “F.D.A. Approves Drug for Persistently Deadly Form of Lung Cancer.”)