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Shares of Gilead fell greater than 10% on Monday after a key drug from the corporate didn’t significantly extend the lives of patients with a certain lung cancer in a late-stage trial.
The outcomes are a blow to Gilead, which is working to turn into an influence player within the cancer space. The treatment, Trodelvy, is one in every of Gilead’s best-selling cancer drugs, contributing roughly a 3rd of its $769 million in oncology sales through the third quarter.
The phase-three study was a part of an effort to expand the usage of Trodelvy, which is already approved to treat some forms of breast and bladder cancers.
Patients with advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer who took Trodelvy lived longer than those that got chemotherapy alone, in line with Gilead. But those results didn’t meet the trial’s bar for achievement.Â
The drugmaker said it’s going to discuss the outcomes with regulators and discover whether certain lung cancer patients should profit from the drug.
Trodelvy belongs to a category of widely sought-out treatments called antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, which deliver a cancer-killing therapy to specifically goal and kill cancer cells and minimize damage to healthy ones. Standard chemotherapy is less selective — it will possibly affect each cancer cells and healthy cells.
ADCs are one in every of the most popular areas of the pharmaceutical industry, as large drugmakers ink deals to accumulate or co-develop them.
Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said Gilead’s trial results aren’t “totally surprising” to the firm because data from early studies was mixed and data for competing drugs was “lackluster.”
Yee added that the trial results could “dent” investor confidence about whether Gilead may have significant sales in oncology.
