AstraZeneca misses primary goal in breast cancer drug trial
In the United States, AstraZeneca said that camizestrant in combination with Pfizer's Ibrance failed to meet the primary goal of a late-stage clinical trial. The combination did not provide a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival among patients who had not previously been treated for a certain form of advanced breast cancer.
As TimesLIVE reports, camizestrant, sold under the name Etcamah, demonstrated only a numerical, but not statistically significant, improvement in this measure. AstraZeneca shares listed in the United States fell 3% in after-hours trading following the release of the results.
Trial details
The study involved 1,371 patients with the most common type of advanced breast cancer. The growth of such tumors is stimulated by hormones, including estrogen, while the tumors themselves do not have high levels of HER2, another factor in cancer development.
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The Etcamah and Ibrance combination was compared with Ibrance together with therapy that lowers the levels of hormones that stimulate cancer development. AstraZeneca said it would present the full study data at an upcoming medical conference.
Approvals and assessments
A week before reporting the trial results, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to the Etcamah combination for treating patients whose tumors had developed an ESR1 mutation.
RBC Capital analyst Trung Huynh called the result a manageable disappointment for investors: in his view, it removes short-term uncertainty but does not change the long-term investment outlook for camizestrant. Barclays analyst James Gordon noted that the market expected this result given the March failure of a similar Roche drug combination. Jefferies estimates that camizestrant's potential peak annual sales could exceed $5 billion.
