#AS­CO22: In yet an­oth­er sting­ing set­back, Pfiz­er’s block­buster CDK 4/6 fails its lat­est test on sur­vival. But can No­var­tis and Eli Lil­ly ben­e­fit?

In the lat­est in a se­ries of big clin­i­cal set­backs, Pfiz­er re­port­ed at AS­CO that its close­ly watched PALO­MA-2 Phase III study of Ibrance com­bined with the chemo hor­mone ther­a­py Fe­mara (letro­zole) failed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly move the di­al on sur­vival for first-line cas­es of metasta­t­ic breast can­cer com­pared to Fe­mara alone.

With an av­er­age sur­vival of 53.9 months for the com­bo com­pared to 51.2 months for Fe­mara alone, Pfiz­er re­searchers tracked a mar­gin­al haz­ard ra­tio of 0.956 for its pi­o­neer­ing CDK4/6 in HR-pos­i­tive, HER2-neg­a­tive pa­tients. The fran­chise earned more than $5 bil­lion last year af­ter get­ting an ear­ly start in the mar­ket in 2015 based on pos­i­tive pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival da­ta.

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