Biotech res­ur­rects a long fad­ed No­var­tis can­cer drug star, us­ing a bio­mark­er strat­e­gy to push ahead

Five years af­ter No­var­tis $NVS abrupt­ly dumped a pro­gram for its TKI dovi­tinib af­ter it failed to beat so­rafenib in a head-to-head Phase III show­down on metasta­t­ic re­nal cell car­ci­no­ma, a Dan­ish biotech out­fit is tak­ing it on to see if they can get it off the shelf and across the fin­ish line.

On­col­o­gy Ven­ture — which prefers to see the Phase III da­ta as proof that their drug was no worse than so­rafenib — has fol­lowed up on an op­tion deal to take on the drug, sign­ing off on an un­spec­i­fied list of up­front fee, mile­stones and roy­al­ties. And the biotech now plans to pur­sue a bio­mark­er ap­proach to iden­ti­fy pa­tients most like­ly to re­spond fa­vor­ably to the drug.

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