On a quest to treat new­ly di­ag­nosed lym­phoma pa­tients, Roche teas­es pos­i­tive piv­otal da­ta

A cou­ple of years ago, as gener­ics were eat­ing in­to the sales of its top three can­cer drugs, Roche snagged an ear­ly ap­proval for its an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate Po­livy in pre­vi­ous­ly treat­ed dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma (DL­B­CL) pa­tients. Now, the com­pa­ny’s look­ing to po­si­tion the drug as a first-line treat­ment — and it says it has the topline da­ta from a large, in­ter­na­tion­al study to back it up.

Com­pared to a place­bo, Po­livy (po­latuzum­ab ve­dotin) com­bined with chemother­a­py and a ver­sion of Roche’s Rit­ux­an helped pa­tients live longer with­out wors­en­ing dis­ease, the phar­ma said on Mon­day morn­ing. Pa­tients in the treat­ment arm re­ceived a com­bi­na­tion of the chemother­a­pies cy­clophos­phamide and dox­oru­bicin along with the steroid pred­nisone (R-CHP), while those in the place­bo arm re­ceived cy­clophos­phamide, dox­oru­bicin, vin­cristine and pred­nisone (R-CHOP).

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