Clovis's ovarian cancer drug set for label expansion, shares soar
This article by Natalie Grover for Reuters may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Clovis's late-stage trial was designed to move its drug, Rubraca, up to a second-line treatment and later, a maintenance treatment. Maintenance therapy immediately follows initial treatment to keep patients cancer-free if they go into remission.
Rubraca, like Tesaro Inc's Zejula and AstraZeneca Plc's Lynparza, belongs to a closely watched class of new medicines called PARP inhibitors, which blocks enzymes that repair damaged DNA, helping kill cancer cells in the process.
Rubraca was granted accelerated approval in December by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat patients whose cancer tested positive for defective BRCA genes, and whose disease had advanced despite two or more rounds of chemotherapy.
BRCA gene mutations are known to raise the risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
Clovis's latest study included 564 patients and tested Rubraca against a placebo in patients with various gene mutations who had undergone initial platinum-based chemotherapy.
When given Rubraca, women with recurrent ovarian cancer lived a median 10.8 months without their disease worsening, compared with 5.4 months for women on a placebo, Clovis said.
Immuno-oncology represents an exciting evolving subsector within the much broader biotechnology theme. It represents the cutting edge of customised medicine where an increasing number of therapies are being developed for very specific attack vectors to target cancers even in late stage patients as detailed above. Considering the fact that tools to measure the immune system’s response to infections didn’t really exist until at least the 1950s, immunology and its many iterations from rheumatism to cancer represent significant growth themes.
The Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy ETF has firmed towards the lower side of a developing more than yearlong range. However a sustained move above $23 will be required to break this downward bias evident over the last three months.
Meanwhile a significant number of the smaller constituents are turning to outperformance with Clovis Oncology being the latest. Also see Comment of the Day on June 14th