Breast can­cer ap­proval in tow, As­traZeneca, Dai­ichi armed an­ti­body scores in key gas­tric can­cer study

As­traZeneca kicked off Mon­day with a flur­ry of good news. Apart from un­veil­ing pos­i­tive re­sults on its stroke tri­al test­ing its clot-fight­er Bril­in­ta, and wel­com­ing its ex­per­i­men­tal IL-23 in­hibitor brazikum­ab back from Al­ler­gan — the British drug­mak­er al­so dis­closed some up­beat gas­tric can­cer da­ta on its HER2-pos­i­tive on­col­o­gy ther­a­py it is col­lab­o­rat­ing on with Dai­ichi Sankyo.

Buoyed by the per­for­mance of its on­col­o­gy drugs, last March As­traZeneca chief Pas­cal So­ri­ot bet big to part­ner with Dai­ichi on the can­cer drug, with $1.35 bil­lion up­front in a deal worth up to rough­ly $7 bil­lion. Rough­ly 8 months lat­er, as 2019 drew to a close, the FDA swift­ly ap­proved the drug — trastuzum­ab derux­te­can — for use in breast can­cer, months ahead of the ex­pect­ed de­ci­sion date.

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