As­traZeneca’s shares spike on a sur­prise coup in PhI­II lung can­cer da­ta

As­traZeneca $AZN shares popped more than 7% this morn­ing on pos­i­tive Phase III pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival da­ta for Imfinzi (dur­val­um­ab) in treat­ing ad­vanced, in­op­er­a­ble and chemo-re­sis­tant non-small cell lung can­cer.

An­a­lysts did a quick dou­ble take and im­me­di­ate­ly cheered it as a re­mark­able – and com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed – hit.

That’s the right tar­get for As­traZeneca, which re­cent­ly won its first ap­proval for the world’s fifth check­point in­hibitor. On Wednes­day Mer­ck moved to the front of that field with an ap­proval to use a com­bi­na­tion of Keytru­da with chemo as a first-line ther­a­py on NSCLC, putting it on top of the heap of ri­vals look­ing to carve out a big piece of the block­buster mar­ket.

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