AstraZeneca’s pioneering cancer drug passes key clinical trials

ONE of AstraZeneca’s most promising experimental cancer drugs is on track to become a blockbuster treatment after sailing through final clinical trials.

Lynparza, part of a new breed of cancer treatments known as Parp inhibitors or DNA Damage Repair (DDR), improved survival rates in patients with a certain type of breast cancer compared with chemotherapy – the current standard of care.

Shares in AstraZeneca rose 1.6pc to £45.95 yesterday.

AstraZeneca will submit the drug for approval in the US in the second half of the year. If it gets the green light from regulators, Lynparza will be the first DDR treatment on the market for breast cancer. The results give the Cambridgebased pharmaceuticals company an advantage over rivals racing to be first to market new oncology drugs.

US drugs giant Abbvie was close to beating AstraZeneca with a DDR drug for breast cancer, but the medication, veliparib, failed in late-stage clinical trials in December.

Lynparza, which is already approved for use in women with a form of ovarian cancer, is a key medication in AstraZeneca’s oncology portfolio and this trial is one of the main studies to report this year. It was also discovered and developed in the UK.

This new class of drug works by thwarting special cellular systems, or pathways, in the body whose function is to repair damaged DNA within malignant tumours, without which the tumours cannot continue to grow.

Women with the form of breast cancer that Lynparza targets tend to be young, in their early 40s, when diagnosed. At the moment, their only treatment option is chemotherapy.

Lynparza generated sales of $218m for AstraZeneca last year.

Analysts at Berenberg believe the drug is now on its way to becoming a blockbuster treatment, with annual sales of more than $1bn. “The AstraZeneca turnaround story largely hinges on what happens to its oncology portfolio and progress with Lynparza is an important element of that turnaround,” they said.

About 15pc of ovarian cancer patients have the genetic mutation that Lynparza targets, while roughly 10pc of women with breast cancer, estimated at 1,700 patients a year in the US, have it.

AstraZeneca is also testing Lynparza in other forms of cancer, such as prostate cancer.