In follow-up data from the phase III ALEX study, an initial treatment Alecensa (alectinib) significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 57 percent (hazard ratio= 0.43, 95 percent CI: 0.32-0.58) compared to crizotinib after two years of follow-up in people with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, as assessed by the investigator.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
