A new lung cancer pill has been hailed as an “off-the-charts” success.

Patients with incurable lung cancer could see their lives extended by several years thanks to a drug that is being hailed as the “best ever” treatment for the disease.

About six in ten patients given the daily lorlatinib tablet survived five years without cancer progression, compared with just eight percent who received standard care.

Researchers said the results were “off the charts” after the trial found it improved survival rates by the longest time on record.

Researchers presenting the findings at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago said it was impossible to say how long it extended life because most are still living without progression.

The study involved 296 people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer caused by a mutation in the ALK gene, an aggressive form of the disease that often spreads to the brain.

Typically non-smokers who are younger than the average lung cancer patient, around 350 people in the UK are diagnosed with ALK-positive lung cancer each year.

Experts hope that lortlatinib will be approved as a first-line NHS treatment for these patients within months.

Lorlatinib, developed by Pfizer, works by binding to the ALK protein on the surface of cells, blocking the growth of tumors and “stopping cancer in its tracks.”

Dr. David Spigel, ASCO’s chief scientific officer, said the industry had “not seen anything like this”.

He said: “The results for lorlatinib are the best we have ever seen.

“We have not seen such results so often in oncology, let alone in non-small cell lung cancer.

“These are some of the best results we’ve seen for advanced disease in any setting … a really big step forward in lung cancer care.”

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The study was led by the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia and included 296 people with advanced ALK-positive lung cancer, with a quarter of patients already seeing the cancer spread to their brain.

Half were given lorlatinib, while the others were given an existing drug called crizotinib, designed to work in a similar way.

Over five years, 60 percent of the lorlatinib group had no cancer progression, which the researchers said was “unheard of.”

These results compare favorably with a progression-free survival of just nine months on average.

Patients underwent brain scans every eight weeks, which showed that lorlatinib prevented the cancer from spreading to the brain and stopped the growth of any existing brain tumors.

Lead author Dr Benjamin Solomon said: “Importantly, about a quarter of patients with ALK+ lung cancer have brain metastases present at the time of diagnosis, and progressive CNS involvement remains a major concern for these patients.

“This is the longest progression-free survival ever reported for ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer, and indeed, to our knowledge, any targeted lung cancer therapy to date.”

The drug has been available on the NHS since 2020, but only for limited use in patients who have exhausted all other treatment options, with fewer than 100 people receiving it each year.

The results now mean that medical regulator NICE will reconsider lorlatinib to provide a new standard first-line treatment for patients with ALK-positive lung cancer.

Debra Montague, chair or ALK Positive Lung Cancer UK, said: “Lung cancer often spreads to the brain and Lorlatinib is very successful in stopping it.

“The drug is not yet used for first-line treatment in England, but hopefully it will be approved after these results.”

“ALK-positive lung cancer usually affects patients who have never smoked, and this drug increases the prospect of extending life by many years.”

Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: “The ground-breaking results show that more than half of patients taking Lorlatinib did not suffer disease progression after five years.

“In contrast, more than half of the patients who took Crizotinib had disease progression after just nine months.

“Such research is crucial to finding new ways to treat lung cancer and help more people live longer.”