If there was ever on thing people everywhere could agree on, I think it would be curing cancer.

Or, alternatively, being able to successfully treat cancer 100% (or dang near) of the time.

Lung cancer affects thousands of people across the globe, so news that there may be a new drug available soon is huge news.

Some experts are calling the Phase III trial results for lorlatinib “unprecedented” and “off the chart,” and that it’s setting a “new benchmark for targeted therapies in cancer.”

This is after 60% of patients on the drug showed no disease progression after five years.

That number among patients taking existing treatments was just 8%.

Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) says the results are worthy of the excitement.

“You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the difference between these two drugs. Sixty per cent five-year progression-free survival in non-small cell lung cancer is just unheard of.”

Lorlatinib, also known as Lorbrena, was developed to target non-small cell lung cancer associated with a specific genetic mutation involving the ALK gene.

These instances of ALK-positive cancer are a small fraction of cases, but they tend to affect younger people and non-smokers.

They also spread easily to the brain, and treating them can be a big challenge as relapse is likely as people’s brains become resistant to the drugs.

For this trial, a group of 296 patients with ALK-positive lung cancer received treatment with either lorlatinib or crizotinib, the latter of which is a similar drug that has been used in these treatments for years.

Then, researchers followed up with the patients over 5 years, finding that not only were a majority living with progression-free survival outcomes, but only 4 of them developed brain lesions, which had been an issue with crizotinib.

For patients who were already showing signs of brain metastasis when the trial started, lorlatinib decreased the probability of the disease worsening by 83%.

In the crizotinib group, every patient in this category experienced disease progression during the trial.

Lorlatinib is the first drug in its class to allow for such good long term prognosis.

“Lorlatinib is the only ALK TKI that has reported five-year progression-free survival, and even after this time, the majority of patients continue to have their disease controlled, including control of disease in the brain.”

There are some potential side effects, and 77% of patients taking lorlatinib did experience them. The most common were swelling, high cholesterol, and elevated lipid levels – all common side effects with other anticancer drugs as well.

Because of this, 62% of patients took a temporary break from treatment and 11% stopped completely. Crizotinib, too, caused side-effects that caused 48% of patients to take a break and 11% to stop completely.

Reducing the lorlatinib dose early in treatment did not have a negative impact on outcomes.

The authors are very confident in their findings.

“Our results represent the longest progression-free survival ever reported with any single-agent molecular targeted treatment not only in advanced non-small cell lung cancer but across all metastatic solid tumors.”

This is huge news, as lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths all over the world.

And while ALK-mutation cases might be only a fraction, this new generation of drugs could change the game for them.

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