Even after a tumor was fully removed, a mutation called EGFR often let hidden cancer cells regrow within a few years. A trial called ADAURA tested whether a targeted pill, taken daily after surgery, could stop that return.
Researchers running the international ADAURA trial, led from the Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute in China, randomized 682 patients with resected, EGFR-mutated lung cancer to daily osimertinib or placebo. In the stage II to IIIA group, osimertinib cut the risk of recurrence or death by 80 percent, with two-year disease-free survival at 90 percent versus 44 percent.
A later analysis of overall survival found osimertinib also cut the risk of death by about half across the full trial population, not just the risk of recurrence. The drug delays rather than cures the cancer's path back, and researchers are still tracking how long the benefit holds and whether resistant tumors eventually emerge.
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Eighty percent fewer recurrences, one daily pill.
Source
- Wu, Y.-L., Tsuboi, M., He, J., John, T., Grohe, C., Majem, M., Goldman, J. W., Laktionov, K., Kim, S.-W., Kato, T., Vu, H.-V., Lu, S., Lee, K.-Y., Akewanlop, C., Yu, C.-J., de Marinis, F., Bonanno, L., Domine, M., Shepherd, F. A., . . . Herbst, R. S. (2020). Osimertinib in Resected <i>EGFR</i> -Mutated Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 383(18), 1711–1723. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2027071