Volker Wagner (L) and Jeff Legos

As Bay­er, No­var­tis stack up their ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal da­ta at #ES­MO21, a key de­bate takes shape

Ten years ago, a small Nor­we­gian biotech by the name of Al­ge­ta showed up at ES­MO — then the Eu­ro­pean Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Can­cer Con­fer­ence 2011 — and de­clared that its Bay­er-part­nered tar­get­ed ra­dionu­clide ther­a­py, ra­di­um-223 chlo­ride, boost­ed the over­all sur­vival of cas­tra­tion-re­sis­tant prostate can­cer pa­tients with symp­to­matic bone metas­tases.

In a Phase III study dubbed AL­SYM­P­CA, pa­tients who were treat­ed with ra­di­um-223 chlo­ride lived a me­di­an of 14 months com­pared to 11.2 months. The FDA would stamp an ap­proval on it based on those da­ta two years lat­er, af­ter Bay­er snapped up Al­ge­ta and chris­tened the drug Xofi­go.

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Associate

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

San Diego, CA, USA