AstraZeneca and Daiichi’s Datroway boosts overall survival in breast cancer trial

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(Reuters) -AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s precision drug Datroway improved survival prospects in patients with an advanced form of breast cancer in a late-stage trial, the drugmakers said on Monday, paving the way for broader approvals.

The trial was for patients with a type of aggressive and advanced breast cancer for whom immunotherapy was not an option, AstraZeneca said. The treatment was given early and compared with chemotherapy.

The company added that Datroway was the first therapy to significantly improve overall survival in this group, and that it also significantly improved progression-free survival and met the dual main goal of the study.

“We expect today’s results will mark an inflection point in the treatment of these patients who have the poorest prognosis of any type of breast cancer and urgently need better options,” said Susan Galbraith, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president, Oncology Haematology R&D. 

Datroway belongs to a class of medicines called antibody-drug conjugates, also known as “guided-missiles” because they are designed to target only cancer cells while sparing healthy cells, unlike conventional chemotherapy.

It works by targeting the TROP2 protein found on the surface of tumour cells of many types of cancer, and is already approved for treating a form of breast cancer and a type of lung cancer.

AstraZeneca, whose shares rose nearly 1% in early trading, said the companies would share detailed results of the latest trial with regulators and present them at an upcoming, unspecified medical conference. 

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Mrigank Dhaniwala)