UK – NICE recommends AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi for adults with non-small cell lung cancer

AstraZeneca (AZ) has announced that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has approved the routine use of Imfinzi (durvalumab) within NHS England as a monotherapy to treat locally advanced stage 3 unresectable non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The regulatory approval is specifically for adults whose tumours present a protein called PD-L1 on at least 1% of tumour cells and whose disease has not progressed following concurrent platinum-based chemoradiation therapy (cCRT).

Lung cancer is the cancer with the highest mortality rate and accounts for more than one in five (21%) of all deaths caused by cancer. It is estimated that over 34,000 people in England are diagnosed with NSCLC each year, with roughly 20% of these patients receiving a diagnosis at stage 3…