Lecia V. Sequist, MD, who was not involved in the ADAURA study, said this could be  a practice-changing study. Dr. Sequist is the Landry Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Although we had heard via press release that ADAURA reached its primary endpoint, the magnitude of the disease-free survival benefit for adjuvant osimertinib in this study is astounding, and I believe it will be practice-changing. This is the first large, randomized study of adjuvant EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors for EGFR mutation–positive cancer that has been prospectively designed and fully carried out in the appropriate genotype-specific population, along with standard-of-care chemotherapy. Furthermore, it utilized osimertinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor with a known survival advantage over other EGFR drugs in the stage IV setting and with a relatively mild side-effect profile,” she continued.

Lecia V. Sequist, MD

“Even though we don’t yet have overall survival data from ADAURA, which are typically considered the gold standard for adjuvant therapies, I think patients will find it meaningful to be able to try a therapy that lowers their chance of cancer recurrence by 83%. For me, the degree of the disease-free survival benefit seen here is sufficient to alter my practice,” Dr. Sequist stated. 

DISCLOSURE: Dr. Sequist has served as a consultant for Janssen, AstraZeneca, Genentech, and Flagship and has received institutional research funding from Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, Merrimack, Genentech, Loxo, and Blueprint Medicines.