Newly approved drug uses the immune system to fight lung cancer

A first-of-its-kind lung cancer treatment approved Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration aids the body’s immune system to fight off cancerous tumors.

Approval for the drug Opdivo, engineered by New York-based pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb, came over three months before the FDA’s scheduled decision deadline. The drug also was approved last year to treat skin cancer melanoma after study trials showed strong results. A month’s dosage costs around $12,500.

Squamous cell cancer, the type Opdivo has been approved to treat, makes up about 30 percent of nonsmall-cell lung cancer diagnoses, according to the New York Times. Last year, almost 160,000 people died from lung cancer and 224,000 were newly diagnosed with the disease.

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