Lilly’s Alimta breaks 70 limit, keeping NSCLC at bay in elderly sub-group
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
An analysis of the performance in the elderly of Lilly's Alimta (pemetrexed for injection) in the most common form of lung cancer, nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer, has shown that the drug reduced the risk of disease progression by 65%. The drug was given as maintenance therapy following first line treatment with Alimta plus cisplatin induction therapy and provided patients over 70 years of age median progression-free survival of 6.4 months, compared with 3.0 months for those in the control group. Its impact on younger patients was much less marked.