Roche boasts of stalling lung can­cer with Tecen­triq/chemo com­bo -- but ri­val Mer­ck stays out front

CHICA­GO — Roche ar­rived at AS­CO boast­ing a sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance for treat­ing front­line cas­es of ad­vanced squa­mous non-small cell lung can­cer with a com­bi­na­tion of Tecen­triq and chemo. But the ad­van­tage it of­fers may ap­pear rel­a­tive­ly mar­gin­al for pa­tients and was quick­ly eclipsed by more ex­ten­sive pos­i­tive da­ta from a dom­i­nant Mer­ck.

We al­ready learned the top-line re­sults ear­li­er from the phar­ma gi­ant, which con­tin­ues to have high hopes for the PD-L1 check­point in­hibitor, even as it’s in dan­ger of los­ing its third-place po­si­tion be­hind Mer­ck and Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb to a surg­ing As­traZeneca.

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