No­var­tis finds a third-gen­er­a­tion scion to an ag­ing Gleevec, suc­cess­ful­ly tak­ing on a Pfiz­er ri­val for last-chance CML pa­tients

Near­ly 20 years af­ter No­var­tis’ fad­ing block­buster Gleevec trans­formed the treat­ment of chron­ic myeloid leukemia and in­spired a wave of new treat­ments to fol­low, the phar­ma gi­ant is step­ping up with a gen­er­a­tion 3.0 drug for the field.

In a head-to-head study against Pfiz­er’s Bo­sulif, one of the orig­i­nal sec­ond-gen drugs on the mar­ket, No­var­tis says as­ci­minib (ABL001) scored a clear and sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant win in treat­ing pa­tients with Philadel­phia chro­mo­some-pos­i­tive CML who had failed at least 2 lines of ther­a­py. In­ves­ti­ga­tors com­pared the ma­jor mol­e­c­u­lar re­sponse (MMR) rate at 24 weeks.

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