Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo already boasts an FDA approval in liver cancer patients who have been treated with Bayer’s Nexavar. But its quest to jump into the front line just hit a snag.
The BMS PD-1 drug failed to beat Nexavar at extending patients’ lives in a phase 3 study, the company acknowledged Monday. The Bayer drug has long been as the standard of care for patients with newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), competition-free in that indication until Eisai and Merck & Co.’s Lenvima just recently joined it.
While Bristol’s survival data didn’t meet the statistical significance bar in the trial, dubbed CheckMate-459, BMS said there was “a clear trend” toward improvement with Opdivo. ...