AMerck drug that could be a best-in-class treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. An early-stage Pfizer drug that looks like it could compete as a breast cancer treatment. A Roche Holding drug that appears to be a potential effective treatment for liver cancer. And surprisingly good data from the small biotech eFFECTOR Therapeutics in a trial of a new breast cancer treatment.
Those are some of the highlights from the avalanche of new cancer treatment data that hit late Thursday.
Ahead of the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, which begins June 2 in Chicago, companies released scientific abstracts of papers that they’ll present at the annual meeting. The gathering is the year’s most important for scientists studying cancer, and for drugmakers developing new cancer treatments.
Shares of the largest drugmakers didn’t move substantially following the release of the abstracts, as investors and analysts rushed to make sense of them late Thursday and early Friday. A few smaller biotech stocks did move sharply, most notably EFFECTOR (ticker: EFTR), which was up nearly 30% Friday.
Below are some early highlights from the abstracts, and what they might mean for the drugmakers.
Pfizer (PFE) released more than 40 abstracts on trials of drugs, including its experimental multiple myeloma treatment elranatamab and Talzenna, which is currently approved to treat breast cancer.
The company also presented very early data on a new breast cancer drug—a type known as a CDK4-selective inhibitor—that looked encouraging. TD Cowen analyst Steve Scala wrote Friday that it looks better than data from possible competitors also in their early stages of development.
Merck (MRK) highlighted new data from a trial of a combination of its blockbuster Keytruda with a medicine called Lenvima in renal cell carcinoma patients, saying that the combination reduced the risk of death by 21% after four years in comparison with patients who received an older Pfizer drug called Sutent.
Analysts focused on early data on a non-small cell lung cancer treatment from Merck called MK-2870, a so-called antibody drug conjugate. Mizuho analyst Mara Goldstein wrote that the early results looked comparable to Gilead Science’s (GILD) Trodelvy.
eFFECTOR announced positive data from a Phase 2 trial of a combination of three medicines that includes their new drug zotatifin in patients with metastatic breast cancer. In a heavily pretreated population, the study saw partial responses in 26% of the small group of patients who received the treatment. In a note out Thursday, Stifel analyst Benjamin Burnett said that he now believes the drug has a 40% chance of working, up from his previous estimate of 20%.
“At the stock’s current valuation, we think [zotatifin] alone can drive share outperformance, and thus recommend owning into future zota readouts later this year,” Burnett wrote.
eFFECTOR on Friday announced it had sold shares of its common stock worth $7.5 million to “a single healthcare-focused institutional investor” in a direct offering priced at the market.
by: Josh Nathan-Kazis
published on Barron’s