Vaccine shows promising survival rates for patients with lung cancer

A long-term follow-up of a clinical trial has shown promising results for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The findings, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2012, represent an updated long-term survival analysis on patients treated with belagenpumatucel-L, a therapeutic vaccine derived from four lung cancer cell lines. The study included 75 patients with NSCLC who were randomly assigned three different doses of the vaccine. For all patients, the median survival was 14.5 months and the five-year survival rate was 20 percent. The 40 patients with stage 3B/4 cancer who received the two higher doses had a median survival of 15.9 months and a one-year survival rate of 61 percent, a two-year survival rate of 41 percent and a five-year survival rate of 18 percent. A phase III clinical trial of the vaccine is currently underway in eight countries.