AstraZeneca announced on Tuesday that its Imfinzi immunotherapy doubled the three-year survival rate of patients with advanced biliary tract cancer in a phase III clinical trial.

According to AstraZeneca, 14.6% of patients treated with Imfinzi and chemotherapy were still alive after three years, compared with 6.9% with chemotherapy alone.

Of the 341 patients followed in the study, overall survival was 12.9 months with Imfinzi and chemotherapy, versus 11.3 months in the chemotherapy group.

Although rare, biliary tract cancer (cholangiocarcinoma) affects 50.000 people in the USA, Europe and Japan, and some 210,000 worldwide.

The diagnosis of the disease is grim, with only 5% to 15% of patients still alive after five years.

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