How many pills are needed for each use of durvalumab?

Durvalumab/Durvalumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor developed by AstraZeneca under the trade name Imfinzi. It mainly targets programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) and inhibits its binding to PD-1, thereby activating T cells to restore immune attack function. It is widely used to treat various advanced malignant tumors such as small cell lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and bladder cancer. In clinical practice, the question of how many pills of durvalumab are needed for each use needs to be judged based on the patient's weight, dosage regimen and drug specifications.

The most common way of using durvalumab is intravenous infusion. There are currently two mainstream international dosages: one is a weight-based regimen, which is 10 mg per kilogram of body weight, once every two weeks; the other is a fixed-dose regimen, which is 1500 mg per infusion, once every four weeks. The latter has become the preferred option for most patients, especially in the maintenance treatment phase with clear indications and no serious adverse reactions. Based on this dose, the amount of medicine required each time will depend on the actual packaging size of the medicine purchased. Most durvalumab on the market is a 500mg/10ml injection solution, so each injection of 1500mg requires three 500mg vials of the drug. In other words, patients usually need three vials of durvalumab for one treatment.

During the drug preparation process, a doctor or pharmacist will mix and infuse three drug solutions intravenously, which lasts for about about 1 hour. The entire process is conducted in a hospital or professional institution. It should be noted that although this dose seems large, durvalumab is less toxic and has more controllable side effects than traditional chemotherapy, and its mechanism of action is to control and eliminate cancer cells by enhancing the body's own immunity. Therefore, it is widely used for maintenance treatment after radiotherapy and chemotherapy, especially in the field of non-small cell lung cancer. It has achieved significant clinical recognition.

Reference materials:https://www.imfinzi.com/