By Adria Calatayud
Roche Holding said a drug candidate showed better potential than existing therapies in a late-stage study with patients with a type of advanced lung cancer who had been previously treated.
The Swiss drugmaker said Thursday that its experimental drug, divarasib, met its primary and key secondary objectives in a head-to-head clinical trial that compared it against approved treatments Amgen's Lumakras and Mirati Therapeutics's Krazati.
Divarasib showed meaningful improvements in both patients' overall survival and the time they survived without the disease worsening, Roche said. No new safety signals were identified, it added.
Roche said it would submit the data to health authorities with the aim of launching the treatment as soon as possible.
The company is evaluating divarasib on its own and as part of drug combinations without chemotherapy across different settings of the disease and stages of treatment, it said.
Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com