Uruguay approves drug that delays the effect of a type of lung cancer

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Each year some 1.8 million people die of lung cancer in the world. In Uruguay, over 1,300 die from the disease. Although prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in the country, lung cancer kills the most. As for women, it is the third most common type of fatal cancer.

The rate is increasing dramatically: among women alone, the mortality rate
per year is growing by 3.6%.

Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health approved the use of the new drug developed by Pfizer. It has also been approved by countries such as Argentina, the United States, the European Union and Japan. Its name is dacomitinib and it acts by inhibiting a protein called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), involved in tumor development.

EGFR plays a key role in the development of tumors, particularly those with the worst prognoses. This feature is identified by molecular testing. It is administered orally to adult patients with a subtype of the disease known as non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). About 85% of lung cancers are of this type.

To qualify, patients must have locally advanced or metastatic cancers. In fact, 3 out of every 4 cancers of this type show this degree of progression in the body when diagnosed. In addition, as a characteristic, they will have frequent EGFR mutations.

Patients with all these combined features in Uruguay, i.e. those who would be eligible for the drug, account for 18% of non-small cell lung cancer patients.

Pfizer’s drug has adverse effects, such as diarrhea in 87%, rash in 77%, stomatitis in 70%, nail disorders in 66%, increased transaminases in 24%, conjunctivitis in 23%, alopecia in 23% and pruritus in 20%. Serious adverse reactions were recorded in 6.2% of cases.

In the trials conducted, the new drug showed an encouraging result: 7.3 months longer average life expectancy over the group of patients who received conventional therapy.

“This treatment increases the time of disease control without progression and prolongs patients’ survival,” said Dr. Mauricio Cuello, oncologist and Grade 4 professor at the University of the Republic.

“Technological progress has improved the profiling of the molecular mechanisms behind the development of an oncologic disease. This has enabled the development of specific drugs for such alterations and also to know which patients are going to benefit from these treatments. Precision medicine has given rise to the approach to cancer based on a concept that today we call precision oncology,” he added.

COVERAGE

The National Resources Fund (FNR) is the body in charge of financing coverage of expensive procedures and drugs in Uruguay’s healthcare system. December 2020 marked 40 years since its inception.

“Uruguay is one of the few countries that provides high-cost benefits to its entire population; in other countries, in order to have dialysis or to receive a transplant or an expensive drug, people have to mortgage their homes, sell property, or get into debt, while here, among the benefits provided by the FNR, this is not the case because it is universal and solidarity-based coverage,” said Minister of Public Health Daniel Salinas, at the organization’s celebration.