The European Commission has approved Roche’s medicine Tarceva for use in patients with a genetically distinct type of lung cancer, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs said on Thursday. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death globally, killing more people than breast, colon, kidney, liver, skin and prostate cancers combined, the Basel-based firm said. The approval will enable the use of Tarceva in people with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, Roche said in a statement, adding that treatment with this medicine has been shown to more than triple the number of patients with shrinking tumours.
