Roche

Interim data from Roche Group member Genentech’s first randomized study of a candidate treatment for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) failed to meet the clinical trial’s co-primary endpoint against the hard-to-treat disease.

Bristol Myers Squibb and Nektar Therapeutics released disappointing news about their joint Phase III PIVOT IO-001 study evaluating a dual therapy of the immunotherapy drug bempegaldesleukin in combination with Opdivo (nivolumab) compared with Opdivo alone to treat unresectable or metastatic melanoma.

Junshi Biosciences announced that the Phase III clinical trial the Chinese pharmaceutical company is conducting alongside California-based Coherus BioSciences on a potential non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) drug is showing positive preliminary results. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AstraZeneca and Merck’s Lynparza (olaparib) in combination with Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab) for the maintenance treatment of adults with advanced epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer who are in complete or partial response to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy and whose cancer has been tested to have either a deleterious or suspected deleterious BRCA mutation and/or genomic instability.

Hundreds of studies and results were presented at the 61st American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Genentech’s Tecentriq plus chemotherapy as a first-line treatment of metastatic non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

MacroGenics’ metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer drug margetuximab continued to show promise in a second pre-planned interim overall survival analysis of the Phase III SOPHIA trial.

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Phase III CheckMate -548 study of Opdivo (nivoumab) added to current standard of care to treat brain cancer – newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme – did not meet one of the primary endpoints, progression-free survival. The clinical trial will continue to evaluate the other primary endpoint, overall survival.

Merck & Co. announced presentation of the full results from the pivotal Phase 3 KEYNOTE-426 trial investigating the company’s anti-PD-1 therapy Keytruda in combination with Inlyta, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, for the first-line treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Merck & Co. Inc. said the combination of the drugmaker’s cancer immunotherapy Keytruda with Pfizer Inc.’s Inlyta cut the risk of death nearly in half for patients with the most common form of kidney cancer when compared with treatment with the chemotherapy drug Sutent.