Dai­ichi says it’s ready to change the stan­dard of care for acute myeloid leukemia — but it’s a work in progress

Close to 4 years ago, Dai­ichi Sankyo swooped in to buy lit­tle San Diego-based Am­bit Bio­sciences for up to $410 mil­lion — $315 mil­lion of that in cash — to lay its hands on a leukemia drug called quizar­tinib.

Over the week­end, in­ves­ti­ga­tors rolled out the late-stage da­ta that the Japan­ese com­pa­ny plans to take to reg­u­la­tors at the FDA. The re­sults are sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant but un­spec­tac­u­lar, with 27% of the pa­tients suf­fer­ing from treat­ment-re­sis­tant acute myeloid leukemia with FLT3-ITD mu­ta­tions in the drug arm mak­ing it to 52 weeks com­pared to 20% of the chemo pa­tients in the con­trol arm.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER