#ASH17: No­var­tis’ 6-month Kym­ri­ah da­ta in DL­B­CL sets up a head-to-head fight with Gilead

No­var­tis $NVS has the kind of ev­i­dence of dura­bil­i­ty for its CAR-T drug Kym­ri­ah at 6 months it needs to win a quick shot at com­pet­ing with Gilead on dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma (DL­B­CL) cas­es.

Just a day af­ter com­plet­ing their fil­ing with the FDA, No­var­tis re­port­ed Wednes­day that among 81 pa­tients at month 3, the com­plete re­sponse rate hit 32% with the par­tial re­sponse rate com­ing in at 6%. Their ab­stract on Kym­ri­ah (CTL019) for ASH al­so shows that among 46 pa­tients evalu­able at 6 months, the CR rate was 30% — with 95% re­main­ing con­sis­tent­ly free of any sign of their can­cer — and the PR rate was 7%. Re­searchers said that re­sponse rates were con­sis­tent across sub­groups (in­clud­ing those with dou­ble-hit lym­phoma). Me­di­an du­ra­tion of re­sponse was not reached and the 6-month prob­a­bil­i­ty of be­ing re­lapse free was 73.5% — main­tain­ing the kind of ef­fi­ca­cy for this can­cer that has made CAR-T a new fac­tor in com­bat­ing blood can­cers.

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