Spanish research on lung cancer increases survival by 20% and will benefit 6,000 patients a year

MADRID, 29 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Pioneering Spanish research worldwide has managed to consolidate a new standard of treatment for early lung cancer, which means increasing survival by 20 percent and will benefit more than 6,000 patients in Spain every year.

The results of this study, carried out by the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP) and published in the scientific journal 'New England Journal of Medicine', endorse the great benefit of chemo-immunotherapy with nivolumab before operating on lung tumors in stages III.

"This Spanish study has opened the door to a global change in the treatment of patients with early lung cancer. The United States made rapid approval for this treatment scheme to be available in North American hospitals, and we expect it to arrive this year in Europe as well. A global change that begins and consolidates with 100 percent Spanish research", celebrated the president of the GECP and principal investigator of the study, Mariano Provencio.

Currently only 30 percent of these patients survive five years. "With the new scheme, this percentage could reach 70 percent. More than 6,000 patients can benefit from improvements in response to treatment and survival each year in Spain," the doctor assured.

This new regimen is not just "one drug only." "We are talking about a change in the therapeutic approach and strategy that involves many professionals: pathologists, surgeons, oncologists or radiotherapists. We have found a significant improvement that can lead us to the cure of a significant number of patients after decades without progress", has detailed.

The data from the study, called 'NADIM II', open the door to increasing the percentage of patients who achieve a complete remission of their tumor in the long term.

In this sense, the research indicates that 36.8 percent of patients achieve a complete reduction of the tumor, compared to 6.9 percent who do so with the traditional approach of applying treatment after surgery.

The improvement in survival is also very clear, 20 percent higher, since with the experimental arm 85 percent of the patients are alive at two years compared to 63 percent with the traditional approach.

This treatment approach would also allow for an increase in the number of patients who may finally be operable: 93 percent of patients in the combination therapy group underwent surgery after treatment, compared to 69 percent in the combination therapy group. control.

"It is possible that more people will have surgery with this approach because this treatment is more effective in reducing the size of the tumor, without adding a lot of toxicity," explained Dr. Provencio.

At the time of diagnosis, more than a third of patients with lung cancer have early-stage or locally advanced disease. In this context, neither surgery nor radiotherapy alone is associated with good results.

"In these cases there are usually micro-metastases in a lymph node, so most patients eventually relapse, accounting for two thirds of systemic relapses," said Dr. Provencio.

In this sense, one of the strengths of the Spanish study is that it focuses on patients with locally advanced stage IIIA, with greater need for clinical improvements.

'NADIM', a pilot study in 46 patients, was the first worldwide study to analyze the benefits (feasibility, safety, efficacy, and survival) of administering chemoimmunotherapy with nivolumab before surgery and nivolumab monotherapy after surgery. patients with lung cancer in early or locally advanced stages. The results were published in 2020 in the scientific journal 'The Lancet', the most prestigious in the world.

"It was a change of approach that was gestated from an independent clinical research group in Spain. The results were so spectacular (81.9 percent of patients alive at three years, 69.6 percent had no progression of the disease after three years and 63 percent absence of tumor in surgery) that we captured international interest and a worldwide study was launched in this line that validated the NADIM data and was key to the accelerated approval by the FDA of this treatment", detailed Dr. Provencio.

Based on this pilot study, the GECP launched 'NADIM II', where there are two treatment branches that compare the chemotherapy standard for this type of patients against combined chemo-immunotherapy therapy and that validate the findings presented up to now and a paradigm shift. The 'NADIM II' study recruited 86 patients from twenty Spanish hospitals.