2017 was a year of exceptional fireworks and rapid development for tumor immunotherapy, in which the 5 heavyweight teams in the field - Merck Sharp & Dohme, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer/Merck Merck Sharp & Dohme, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer/Merck have finally come together, and all of them have received varying numbers of regulatory approvals for their PD-1/PD-L1 therapeutic treatments for a wide range of solid tumors in major markets around the world, including the United States and European Union.
But if you think 2017 is a "game-changing" year for immuno-oncology, wait. Tim Anderson, an analyst at Bernstein, a leading global investment bank, recently pointed out that 2018 is the key year for market-defining oncology immunotherapy. strong> . In the first half of 2018 alone, four major giants, including Merck Sharp & Dohme, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), Roche, and AstraZeneca, will be announcing data from pivotal Phase III clinical studies in lung cancer, which, compared to other cancer indications, is a truly extremely lucrative market. lung cancer is a truly lucrative therapeutic market compared to other cancer indications. Here are some of the key Phase III studies in lung cancer that will be announced by the giants this year.
1. AstraZeneca
Last summer, AstraZeneca unveiled its PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor Imfinzi (duravulumab) in combination with a CTLA4 immunotherapy, tremelimumab. tremelimumab first data from the pivotal Phase III clinical study MYSTIC (Clinical Trial Identifier: NCT02453282) for the first-line treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In that study, the Imfinzi tremelimumab immunization combination did not slow lung cancer progression compared to platinum-containing standard-of-care chemotherapy or Imfinzi monotherapy. AstraZeneca insists, however, that the lack of prolongation of progression-free survival (PFS) does not mean that the combination was declared a failure, especially when it comes to prolonging patients' overall survival (OS), a key piece of data that the industry is still waiting for. If AstraZeneca is successful in improving OS, the combination will go head-to-head with Merck Sharp & Dohme's Keytruda chemotherapy combination in the first-line lung cancer treatment space. And if it doesn't succeed, it doesn't bode well for BMS, which is also currently evaluating the potential of its PD-1 immunotherapy in combination with a type of CTLA4 immunotherapy for the first-line treatment of lung cancer.