INDIANAPOLIS (dpa-AFX) - Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) said Thursday that a new subgroup analysis of data from the pivotal Phase III PARAMOUNT study showed that continuation maintenance therapy with ALIMTA (pemetrexed for injection) also reduces the risk of disease progression in patients aged 70 years or older with advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung cancer.
Results from the new analysis were presented during the Lung Cancer - Metastatic Poster Session at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Sweden.
According to Eli Lilly, PARAMOUNT is the first study to evaluate the use of continuation maintenance therapy with ALIMTA following first-line ALIMTA plus cisplatin therapy.
A total of 939 patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC were enrolled in the study;.
The new analysis compared ALIMTA to placebo in elderly patients aged greater than or equal to 70 years. In the group of elderly patients, ALIMTA reduced the risk of disease progression by 65 percent, based on a median progression-free survival of 6.4 months on the ALIMTA arm compared with 3.0 months on the placebo arm.
In the group of patients less than 70 years of age, ALIMTA reduced the risk of disease progression by 31 percent, with a progression-free survival of 4.0 months for ALIMTA and 2.8 months for placebo.
Overall, the most serious drug-related adverse events were higher for elderly patients treated with ALIMTA continuation maintenance compared with patients less than 70 years of age.
Globally, lung cancer is the most common form of cancer and the biggest killer, causing 1.3 million cancer deaths annually.
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© 2011 AFX News
