PRI­MA vs PAO­LA: GSK and Mer­ck/As­traZeneca square off in a high-pro­file PARP show­down at ES­MO

BARCELONA — Among the many im­por­tant high-pro­file show­downs at ES­MO this year, few will be as close­ly watched as the PARP ri­val­ry be­tween the dom­i­nant team at As­traZeneca/Mer­ck and the feisty un­der­dogs at Glax­o­SmithK­line. And it proved to be the hard­est to call, with two sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent late-stage tri­als re­port­ing out for front­line ovar­i­an can­cer.

In re­cent days we got a chance to ex­am­ine both sides, and the on­ly in­escapable con­clu­sion any­one could reach is that the stan­dard of care in this field is un­der­go­ing a ma­jor change for the bet­ter. Pick­ing a win­ner, though, won’t be so easy.

As­traZeneca and Mer­ck chose to see how a com­bi­na­tion of the lead­ing drug, Lyn­parza, worked with Avastin in treat­ing first­line main­te­nance cas­es. For Glax­o­SmithK­line, ES­MO of­fered a chance for R&D chief Hal Bar­ron to make his case for pos­i­tive Phase III da­ta for Ze­ju­la, which they ac­quired in their $5 bil­lion Tesaro buy­out.

GSK’s bot­tom line for their PRI­MA study:

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER