As­traZeneca's prized Imfinzi/treme­li­mum­ab com­bo fails again — this time in head and neck can­cer

As­traZeneca’s big bet on a com­bi­na­tion of its check­point in­hibitor Imfinzi and in-house CT­LA-4 drug has proved ex­ceed­ing­ly cost­ly. The British drug­mak­er con­ced­ed on Fri­day that the com­bi­na­tion had failed to im­prove over­all sur­vival in cer­tain pa­tients with head and neck can­cer, in ad­di­tion to the big flop in the keen­ly-watched MYS­TIC lung can­cer tri­al re­port­ed last month.

The com­bi­na­tion — once tout­ed as the cor­ner­stone of As­traZeneca’s $AZN check­point de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy — did not meet the main goal of help­ing pa­tients with re­cur­rent or metasta­t­ic head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma (HN­SCC) whose dis­ease had spread de­spite plat­inum-based chemother­a­py live longer, when com­pared to stan­dard chemother­a­py.

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