Positive reports from POPLAR and BIRCH studies for atezolizumab in NSCLC- Roche

Roche has announced positive results from two phase II studies that evaluated the investigational cancer immunotherapy atezolizumab (anti-PDL1; MPDL 3280A) in people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In the randomised phase II study, POPLAR, atezolizumab met its primary endpoint and showed a statistically significant survival benefit compared to chemotherapy (HR=0.54; p=0.014) in people with recurrent NSCLC whose tumours expressed medium and high levels of PD-L1, which corresponded with people living 7.7 months longer than people who received docetaxel chemotherapy.

A separate, single-arm phase II study, BIRCH, met its primary endpoint and showed that atezolizumab shrank tumours (objective response rate, ORR) in up to 27 percent (p=0.0001) of people whose disease had progressed on prior medicines and also expressed the highest levels of PD-L1. Median survival had not yet been reached. In both studies of atezolizumab, adverse events (AEs) were consistent with those observed in previous studies.