AstraZeneca shares rose 2.7 percent after the British drugmaker won earlier-than-expected U.S. regulatory approval for a leukemia drug, in a challenge to rival AbbVie.

AstraZeneca’s BTK inhibitor Calquence won Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the U.S. FDA as a monotherapy treatment for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer Inc.’s Ruxience (rituximab-pvvr) – a biosimilar to Rituxan (rituximab) – for the treatment of adult patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and granulomatosis with polyangiitis and microscopic polyangiitis.

Copenhagen, Denmark-based Genmab A/S raised $506 million with an initial public offering (IPO), with the company trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol GMAB.

AstraZeneca announced detailed results from the interim analysis of the Phase III ASCEND trial at the European Hematology Association Annual Congress in Amsterdam, showing Calquence (acalabrutinib) significantly prolonged the time patients lived without disease progression in relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

AstraZeneca Plc’s blood cancer drug Calquence met the main goal of a final-stage study.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a treatment using Venclexta plus Gazyva for people with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

AstraZeneca’s Calquence (acalabrutinib) hit the mark in a Phase III trial of previously treated patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed a partial clinical hold on all trials of AbbVie’s Venclexta for multiple myeloma, after a review of data found a higher proportion of deaths in the cancer drug arm of the late-stage study.

AbbVie, a research-based global biopharmaceutical company, announced that the Phase 3 iLLUMINATE (PCYC-1130) trial met its primary endpoint of improvement in progression-free survival.