00:00 The Italian Pharmaceutical Agency has admitted to the remuneration of tepotinib, the drug
00:09 developed by Merck for the treatment of lung carcinoma not in small cells, advanced with
00:15 genetic alterations that cause the skipping of zone 14 of the mesenchymal-epithelial
00:21 transition factor in adult patients.
00:23 The lung tumor has 40,000 new cases in Italy every year and more than half of these are
00:30 in the advanced stage.
00:31 Of these, about 70% are lung tumors not in small cells and therefore fall into the category
00:41 in which we can apply precision medicine in which we have to identify the predictive biomarkers
00:47 among which MET, this Exon Skipping Mutation of the Met zone, which concerns about 2 to
00:54 4% of patients affected by lung tumor not in small cells in the advanced stage.
01:00 Tepotinib is an inhibitor of the tyrosinkinase of the MET gene, able to block the mechanism
01:06 that the gene implements to grow the tumor.
01:09 Tepotinib acts on a mutation of the zone 14 of the MET gene, has made a very complex
01:16 corporeal study, which is important in its complexity, only the part that concerned
01:23 patients already pre-treated with chemotherapy has been accepted and this was the indication
01:27 that it had then at the European and Italian level.
01:31 So we are talking about patients who have adenocarcinoma diagnosis, receive a first-line
01:36 chemotherapy treatment, when this treatment of first-line chemotherapy ends up working
01:41 the disease increases, the presence of the MET gene, which would have been better to identify
01:45 at the beginning, will allow to use tepotinib and oral Bervia, a daily compress, which has
01:51 the possibility to block this disease for a year, to reduce the dimensions by about
01:59 45% and double the survival of these patients.
02:03 For more than 40 years, Merck has been committed to meet the needs of patients who are not
02:07 satisfied.
02:08 With the launch of tepotinib we are going to satisfy this aspect.
02:14 They are patients who would not have therapeutic alternatives in a pathology such as lung cancer,
02:21 which we know is the first cause of tumors in men and the second in women and above all
02:28 be the first cause of death in men.
02:32 Oncology is now an area of primary interest for Merck.
02:36 Oncology is now an area of absolute interest for Merck and we have, let's say, in assessment
02:44 about 9 compounds out of the 15 components of the Merck Italia pharmaceutical division,
02:49 so you can imagine how important is the commitment on the part of our company within oncology.
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