A lung cancer drug reduced the risk of death by 34% in a late-stage trial, in the latest sign of China’s pharmaceutical ascendance.
The results from the trial conducted in China showed the drug, when combined with chemotherapy, kept people with squamous non-small-cell lung cancer alive for a median of four months longer than the standard treatment, though scientists are debating the findings.
“The Chinese biotech industry has arrived,” an oncologist said, as the country churns out drug innovations. The results cap what one journalist called “a miracle month in medicine” globally: Eli Lilly’s new obesity drug showed patients in a trial shedding nearly a third of their body weight, and a pancreatic cancer drug exhibited life-extending potential.
