Data from ESMO positioned the competing checkpoint inhibitors as potential new standards of care in the first-line setting, but biomarker questions remain.
Trial data, however, raised doubt about Lynparza's benefit in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients with non-BRCA1/2 HRR gene mutations.
After five years, nearly half the Lynparza-treated patients in the SOLO-1 trial remained disease-free, compared with one-fifth of those who received placebo.
Merck and Seattle Genetics will codevelop the antibody drug conjugate ladiratuzumab vedotin, while Merck gains ex-US commercialization rights to the HER2 inhibitor Tukysa.
A Sanford Cancer Center team is genomically profiling head and neck squamous cell cancer samples to look for biomarkers of immunotherapy and chemoradiation response.
Merck announced that the FDA accepted supplemental biologic license applications for the checkpoint inhibitor for early- and later-stage triple-negative breast cancer.
A consortium convened by Friends of Cancer Research has made progress in quantifying sources of TMB assay discordance and created a new test-alignment software tool.
Over the last six months the agency approved 21 cancer treatments for molecularly defined indications compared to 12 during the same period last year and 20 during all of 2019.
The approval will make Merck and AstraZeneca's Lynparza available to patients in the EU who have not progressed after 16 weeks on platinum-based chemotherapy.
The approval is supported by a randomized trial showing that pembrolizumab nearly doubled progression-free survival compared to the standard chemotherapy regimen.
