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Exelixis drug fails PhIII lung cancer trial with Cabometyx and Tecentriq combo
Exelixis’ trial of Cabometyx and Tecentriq for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer failed to meet its goal of extending overall survival…
Exelixis’ trial of Cabometyx and Tecentriq for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer failed to meet its goal of extending overall survival compared to chemotherapy.
The company shared the failure in a brief press release Thursday afternoon. It said it will share other, secondary outcomes at the trial at a future medical meeting.
The 366 patients in the trial received Exelixis’ drug Cabometyx in combination with Roche’s Tecentriq or docetaxel. All of the patients had been treated previously with anti-PD-1 or PD-L1 drugs that failed to stop their cancers.
Exelixis has arrangements with Ipsen, Takeda Pharmaceutical and Roche to help develop Cabometyx, which is approved in the US for the treatment of several other cancers including advanced renal cell carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma and advanced or metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer.
Howard Mayer“The results from the CONTACT-01 clinical trial have shown the challenge of treating NSCLC patients after prior lines of treatment have failed,” Howard Mayer, executive vice president and head of research and development at Ipsen, said in a statement. “While the findings of the study have not met the primary endpoint in this setting, we remain confident in the clinical efficacy of cabozantinib alone and in combination with another treatment in existing indications in difficult-to-treat tumor types.”
In 2016, Ipsen struck a deal with Exelixis for exclusive development and commercialization rights to Cabometyx outside of the US and Japan. Takeda has the rights in Japan, which it snapped up in 2017.
The drug was first approved for second-line treatment of kidney cancer in 2016, two years after a prostate cancer failure forced Exelixis to lay off 70% of its staff. The company’s recent strategy has been pushing combination treatments, such as with Tecentriq, and seeking new indications for the drug.
In March of this year, the company said another combination trial of Cabometyx and Tecentriq failed to beat overall survival outcomes from the drug Nexavar as a first-line treatment for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. It said at the time that it would not to seek an FDA approval for that use.
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