A year af­ter tri­al fail­ure, As­traZeneca with­draws Imfinz­i's maid­en in­di­ca­tion in blad­der can­cer — but ex­ecs look to the bright side

Lung can­cer is the are­na where As­traZeneca’s Imfinzi has made its mark, but those who have watched the PD-L1 drug since it was still known as dur­val­um­ab might re­mem­ber that its very first FDA OK — an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval grant­ed in May 2017 — was for blad­der can­cer.

Un­til to­day.

Af­ter “con­sul­ta­tion with the FDA,” As­traZeneca says it has vol­un­tar­i­ly with­drawn this in­di­ca­tion in the US, mean­ing it will no longer be mar­ket­ing it to pa­tients with lo­cal­ly ad­vanced or metasta­t­ic blad­der can­cer who have been treat­ed with chemother­a­py. Pa­tients cur­rent­ly on the ther­a­py are ad­vised to con­sult with their doc­tors.

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