BIG WIN AGAINST CANCER
2-drug combo
A combination of two immunotherapy drugs cut the risk of death by 37 percent in a key group of kidney-cancer patients, data from a closely watched clinical trial showed on Sunday.
US drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb reported three days ago it was ending the trial well ahead of schedule due to its early success in improving overall survival, despite earlier mixed results.
Now the scale of the benefit provided by the company’s two immune-systemboosting drugs has been disclosed at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Madrid.
The result is important for patients, doctors and investors, not only because it opens up a new option for treating kidney cancer but also because it helps validate the idea of combining two different kinds of immunotherapy.
Opdivo works by blocking the activity of a protein called PD-1, while Yervoy tackles another, called CTLA-4. AstraZeneca is combining two similar drugs in a large lung-cancer trial that reported disappointing initial results in July.
Researchers found that the two Bristol-Myers drugs cut the risk of death by 37 percent in intermediate- and poor-risk patients, which was a main goal of the study. They also improved overall survival in all patients, a secondary measure of success.
Significantly, the immunotherapy combination caused fewer serious side effects than the drug Sutent, said lead researcher Bernard Escudier.
He believes the efficacy and safety profile means Opdivo plus Yervoy should become a new first-line standard of care for patients with advanced disease.
Maria de Santis, of Britain’s University of Warwick, who was not involved in the study, told reporters, “This data is clearly important and practice-changing, and it challenges our former standard of care with TKI therapy.”
Renal-cell carcinoma is the most common type of kidney cancer in adults, accounting for around 100,000 deaths worldwide each year.
Bristol-Myers is a leader in the fast-growing field of cancer immunotherapy and Opdivo is expected to become one of the world’s topselling medicines.
But the drugmaker has been under pressure in the past year after falling behind Merck due to Opdivo’s failure to prolong survival in previously untreated lung cancer, the largest cancer market.