April 13, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Roche will have 11 immunotherapy cancer drugs in late-stage trials by the end of 2015, said Nico Andre, head of medical affairs for oncology at the company, at a conference in Basel on Monday, reported Reuters.
In addition, its experimental cancer drug MPDL3280A will be submitted to U.S. and to European health regulators in the next year, said another Roche executive, Cathi Ahearn, with the hopes it will be approved to treat bladder and lung cancer. Basel-based Roche has been eyeing a market worth as much as $30 billion in annual sales by 2025.
The space is certainly a crowded one. Doctors hosted by market research firm Cowen and Company said March 2 that they are bullish on breast cancer drugs Perjeta and PD-1/PDL1, as well as Roche‘s MPDL3280A, but remain cautious on Palbociclib and Neratinib as they await new trial data, analyst Boris Peaker said March 4.
Cowen hosted a breast cancer expert panel with doctors Eric Winer and Ian Krop on Tuesday, March 3, at their healthcare conference. Both of the panelists are academic physicians at Harvard Medical School. They focused discussion on the clinical and commercial potentials for palbociclib, Perjeta, neratinib, glembatumumab, Keytruda and Roche’s MPDL3280A.
“At our Therapeutics Conference in November 2014 our consultants were bearish on the approvability of palbociclib based on the PALOMA-1 study due to single arm design without a survival benefit,” wrote Peaker in a note to investors. “While the drug was recently approved (ahead of its PDUFA date), our consultants appear to be more bearish than the audience regarding commercial adoption, citing that only a small fraction of patients is likely to benefit.”
Ongoing PALOMA-2 and PALOMA-3 studies may significantly sway their view, and data are expected in late 2015, while the MARIANNE study will not change their use of Kadcyla and are looking to detailed data analysis. Specifically, the physicians would like to know if there is a patient subgroup that may have derived the greatest benefit from Kadcyla treatment.
