Two pills, nearly double the time: a lung cancer combination holds the disease off for 24.9 months

For people whose lung cancer carries two specific changes — a faulty EGFR gene and too much of a protein called MET — doctors in China have tested an all-oral pairing: savolitinib (ORPATHYS) added to osimertinib (TAGRISSO), the standard first treatment. In the Phase 3 SANOVO trial, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Madrid, patients on the combination went a median of 24.9 months before their cancer grew again, against 13.8 months on the standard drug alone. The risk of the disease progressing, or of death, fell by 44% across the trial population — and by 55% in the group with the highest MET levels, where the time gained was 13.7 extra months. Early overall-survival results were also encouraging. Because both medicines are pills, the whole strategy is taken at home, and the trial's biomarker-driven design — testing who has the MET change, then matching the treatment to it — points to a potential new standard of care for this group.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation