#ES­MO18: Car­dio dreams blight­ed, No­var­tis show­cas­es its “block­buster” am­bi­tions for ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals

No­var­tis down­played the painful news yes­ter­day that the FDA had spurned its ap­pli­ca­tion for canakinum­ab as a car­dio drug, im­per­il­ing its lat­est block­buster am­bi­tions for a heart drug. 

Ex­ecs would much pre­fer to talk about Lu­tathera, their ra­dioiso­tope can­cer drug which is al­ready on the mar­ket and was show­cased in an ear­ly pre­sen­ta­tion at ES­MO in Mu­nich Fri­day.

The drug — lutetium Lu 177 dotatate — is a small mol­e­cule that de­liv­ers a ra­dioac­tive el­e­ment to kill can­cer cells. In a new analy­sis of NET­TER-1 tri­al da­ta for the drug, ap­proved for neu­roen­docrine tu­mors, re­searchers spot­light­ed high­ly sig­nif­i­cant pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival re­sults for pa­tients tak­ing the drug, re­gard­less of liv­er tu­mor bur­den.

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