This summary shows the updated results of an ongoing research study called CROWN that was published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine in December 2022. In the CROWN study, researchers looked at the effects of two study medicines called lorlatinib and crizotinib. The study included people with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had not been treated previously. All people in the study had cancer cells with changes (known as alterations) in a gene called anaplastic lymphoma kinase, or ALK. This ALK gene is involved in cancer growth. In this updated study, researchers looked at the continued benefit in people who took lorlatinib compared with people who took crizotinib after 3 years.

What did this study find?

After 3 years of being observed, people who took lorlatinib were more likely to be alive without their cancer getting worse than people who took crizotinib. At 3 years, 64% of people who took lorlatinib were alive without their cancer getting worse compared with 19% of people who took crizotinib. The cancer was less likely to have spread within or to the brain in people who took lorlatinib than in people who took crizotinib. After 3 years of being observed, 61% of people were still taking lorlatinib and 8% of people were still taking crizotinib. People who took lorlatinib had more severe side effects than people who took crizotinib. However, these side effects were manageable. The most common side effects with lorlatinib were high levels of cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides (a type of fat) in the blood. Life-threatening side effects were seen in 13% of people who took lorlatinib and 8% in crizotinib. Two people who took lorlatinib died because of side effects from lorlatinib.

What do the results of the study mean?

The updated results from the CROWN study showed that a larger percentage of people who took lorlatinib continued to benefit from their treatment after being observed for 3 years compared with those who took crizotinib.

Keywords:

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Acknowledgments

Pfizer would like to thank all of the people who took part in this study. The authors of this article thank the people who participated in this trial and their families, as well as the investigators, co-investigators and staff at each of the clinical sites.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This study was sponsored by Pfizer Inc., 235 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017. Phone (United States): +1 212 733 2323.

Full author disclosure information can be found in the original article. Writing support for this summary was provided by Alana Dorfstatter, PharmD, of ClinicalThinking, and was funded by Pfizer.

Open access

This work is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Vol. 19, No. 14

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Metrics

History

Received 21 December 2022

Accepted 19 April 2023

Published online 12 June 2023

Published in print May 2023

Information

Keywords

Acknowledgments

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This study was sponsored by Pfizer Inc., 235 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017. Phone (United States): +1 212 733 2323.

Full author disclosure information can be found in the original article. Writing support for this summary was provided by Alana Dorfstatter, PharmD, of ClinicalThinking, and was funded by Pfizer.

Open access

This work is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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