AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi with pre-surgery drug boosts survival in bladder cancer trial

May 14 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca said on Thursday that a late-stage trial of Imfinzi, combined with a targeted therapy prior to a surgery, showed significantly improved survival rate in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker, however, said overall survival from a combination of its two cancer drugs Imfinzi and Imjudo with the pre-surgery drug was not statistically significant in the trial.

Here are some details:

• Imfinzi given before and after surgery, together with pre-procedure enfortumab vedotin (EV), delivered statistically significant improvements in both event-free survival and overall survival, AstraZeneca said.

• Enfortumab vedotin is a drug given to patients prior to the surgery to shrink the tumour.

• The safety and tolerability of Imfinzi with or without the other drugs was consistent with the known safety profiles of the individual medicines, and there were no new safety signals.

• About one in four patients with bladder cancer has muscle-invasive disease, where the tumour invades the muscle wall of the bladder, without distant metastases, the company said.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)