Roche stacks up Tecen­triq nods, fol­low­ing up breast can­cer ap­proval with small cell lung can­cer

Roche is carv­ing it­self a tidy niche with Tecen­triq in can­cer pock­ets that oth­er im­munother­a­pies haven’t yet con­quered. Af­ter scor­ing ap­proval in front­line use for breast can­cer last week, the Swiss drug­mak­er on Tues­day said the check­point in­hibitor has se­cured the FDA nod as a first-line treat­ment for ex­ten­sive-stage small cell lung can­cer (ES-SCLC).

Tecen­triq will be added to chemother­a­py — car­bo­platin and etopo­side — as the first new op­tion in more than two decades for treat­ment-naive pa­tients whose small cell lung can­cer has spread, Roche said, adding that the mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body is the on­ly can­cer im­munother­a­py to win ap­proval in this dif­fi­cult-to-treat cat­e­go­ry of pa­tients.

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