AstraZeneca Shares fell greater than 5% on Tuesday morning, their biggest day by day loss in seven months, after the British pharmaceutical giant announced disappointing test results for a lung cancer drug.
The Covid-19 vaccine maker traded on the low of the FTSE 100 and dragged all the healthcare sector down after the information was released on Monday showed that its experimental drug datopotamab deruxtecan didn’t significantly improve patients’ overall survival outcomes.
By 11:00 a.m. London time, shares had fallen 4.8 percent.
The results of the late-stage Phase III TROPION-Lung01 study showed that the general survival rate of the brand new drug “did not reach statistical significance,” the corporate said.
The company's drug Dato-DXd was tested in comparison with the chemotherapy treatment docetaxel in patients whose non-small cell lung cancer had returned after one or two previous treatment attempts.
Susan Galbraith, executive vp of oncology research and development at AstraZeneca, said the outcomes showed a “clinically meaningful” trend toward improving survival in patients with advanced lung cancer.
The drug tests have been watched by investors who hope that it may very well be one other successful drug following the success of the Cambridge, England-based company's Covid-19 vaccine.
Previous attempts in July 2023 upset markets although there was some success in slowing the progression of cancer.
The drug, which is being developed jointly with the Japanese company Daiichi Sankyo, should be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December.
Citigroup said in an announcement that the image for the drug was “mixed” but that confidence in its approval “remains high,” regardless that Monday's results made the image much more complex.
“We believe that the data will add complexity and thus increase the approval risks even further in the short term,” the analysts wrote of their Monday note.
image credit : www.cnbc.com