Seat­tle Ge­net­ic­s' armed an­ti­body scores high in front­line blad­der can­cer, tak­ing cen­ter stage at ES­MO

BARCELONA — Seat­tle Ge­net­ics and Astel­las are off to a strong start in ex­pand­ing their fran­chise for the armed an­ti­body en­for­tum­ab ve­dotin — be­fore it’s ac­tu­al­ly on the mar­ket.

Now un­der re­view at the FDA af­ter hit­ting its marks for sec­ond-line ad­vanced blad­der can­cer for pa­tients who had failed chemo or a PD-1(L)1 check­point, re­searchers for the two com­pa­nies turned up at ES­MO to show off how their drug com­bined with Keytru­da trig­gered an im­pres­sive 71% over­all re­sponse rate in front­line pa­tients — 32 of 45 pa­tients — who were in­el­i­gi­ble for chemo. There was a 13% com­plete re­sponse rate and the large ma­jor­i­ty of the re­spons­es — 91% — were vis­i­ble at the first as­sess­ment.

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