(Bloomberg) -- AstraZeneca Plc and partner Daiichi Sankyo Co.’s experimental drug Dato-DXd helped extend the lives of some lung cancer patients in a late-stage study.

The drug already showed it could stave off cancer’s worsening last year. Now, researchers have looked at the data to determine whether it actually helped prolong patients’ lives — a key gauge called overall survival. 

The medicine, an antibody drug-conjugate whose full name is datopotamab deruxtecan, ferries a powerful chemotherapy directly to tainted cells to kill the cancer while sparing their healthy counterparts.

Researchers found the survival benefit wasn’t statistically significant across all patients enrolled in the trial, Astra said Monday. The drug did help extend the lives of patients with non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer, who made up 75% of the volunteers. The patients had previously received at least one other form of treatment. 

“These data will support our ongoing discussions with regulatory authorities globally to potentially bring datopotamab deruxtecan to patients as quickly as possible,” Ken Takeshita, Daiichi’s head of research and development, said in a statement.

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