By Kamal Choudhury Jan 5 (Reuters) – Incyte said on Monday its experimental combo therapy helped patients with a type of blood cancer live longer without their disease worsening in a late-stage study. The trial tested adding the company’s tafasitamab and Bristol Myers’ lenalidomide to R-CHOP, a standard chemotherapy regimen, in about 900 adults newly […]
Health
Incyte’s blood cancer therapy slows disease progression in trial
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By Kamal Choudhury
Jan 5 (Reuters) – Incyte said on Monday its experimental combo therapy helped patients with a type of blood cancer live longer without their disease worsening in a late-stage study.
The trial tested adding the company’s tafasitamab and Bristol Myers’ lenalidomide to R-CHOP, a standard chemotherapy regimen, in about 900 adults newly diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, or DLBCL, an aggressive form of cancer.
The combo is being studied as an initial therapy for high-risk patients with the disease.
The study met its main goal of progression-free survival, showing patients lived longer without their disease worsening, compared with the standard treatment alone.
Guggenheim analyst Michael Schmidt said the data was a “positive surprise,” noting it could serve as a significant additional growth driver alongside Incyte’s existing pipelines.
DLBCL is the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in adults worldwide, accounting for about 40% of cases. About 24,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with the disease each year, according to the company.
Tafasitamab, sold as Monjuvi in the U.S., has received accelerated approval with lenalidomide for patients whose disease has returned or did not respond to earlier treatment and who are not eligible for stem cell transplant.
The Monjuvi combination could capture 15% to 20% of the first-line DLBCL market, translating into $500 million to $1 billion in potential sales, Schmidt said.
Incyte said it plans to seek expanded U.S. approval for the treatment in the first half as a first-line treatment for newly diagnosed patients.
Cantor analysts said while the trial met its goals, data on overall survival, how long patients lived, is likely to be immature, and the company did not provide any indication of trends in those results.
Incyte’s shares were down about 2% in morning trading.
(Reporting by Kamal Choudhury in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Shreya Biswas and Sriraj Kalluvila)