Roche Immune Drug Helps Patients With Aggressive Breast Cancers

  • Tumors with mutations in key protein seen surviving longer
  • First immune oncology drug to show breast cancer benefit

Photographer: Freya Ingrid Morales/Bloomberg

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Roche Holding AG’s Tecentriq medicine helps some people with the most aggressive form of breast cancer live longer, a study showed, the first time an immune therapy has proven effective against the most common tumor that women face.

A tissue test for a protein in the patients’ tumors, called PD-L1, showed who would probably benefit. That group in the clinical trial lived an average of 25 months when they got Tecentriq along with chemotherapy -- about 10 months longer than those who got only chemotherapy.