Novocure making progress with approval for cancer therapy
Root - The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted Novocure’s application for the market authorization of its lung cancer therapy on the basis of TTFields. Treatment using electric fields is said to significantly improve the survival chance of patients.
The cancer treatment specialist Novocure, based in Root in the canton of Lucerne, has applied for pre-market approval (PMA) for its Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) therapy. According to a press release, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now accepted the PMA application for the TTFields therapy for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The TTFields are electric fields that exert physical forces to selectively kill cancer cells through a variety of mechanisms, whereby healthy cells remain unharmed. The LUNAR study, for which TTFields were combined with an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI), was conducted to verify the efficacy and safety of TTFields. The study demonstrated that patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer treated with TTFields and conventional platinum-based chemotherapy had a median overall survival of 13.2 months, as against a significantly shorter overall survival of 9.9 months for those treated with standard therapies alone.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with NSCLC accounting for approximately 85 percent of all lung cancers. In the USA, it is estimated that approximately 193,000 patients are diagnosed with NSCLC each year.
«We are thrilled to announce the FDA has accepted our PMA application for review of the LUNAR data in NSCLC», comments Asaf Danziger, CEO of Novocure, in the press release, before adding: «This significant milestone brings us one step closer to treating patients seeking treatment for NSCLC, post-platinum, for which very few effective non-toxic options exist today».
