(Reuters) -AstraZeneca said its Enhertu cancer drug has been shown to significantly help women suffering from a type of breast cancer that leaves them with poor treatment options, opening the door to a much larger potential patient group.
AstraZeneca, which is working on the drug with Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo, said on Monday that Enhertu prolonged survival and slowed the progression of metastatic breast cancer in women with low levels of a protein known as HER2.
The improvement was “clinically meaningful” when compared with standard chemotherapy, it said, adding that detailed trial results would be presented at an as-yet undisclosed medical conference.
While the study was limited to low-HER2 patients whose tumours had spread to other parts of the body, analysts have said a positive trial read-out could portend future use at an earlier stage of the disease with potentially hundreds of thousands of new eligible patients per year.
AstraZeneca has predicted a decline in sales of its widely used COVID-19 vaccine this year.
However, brisk revenue growth from new cancer drugs has prompted analysts to rank the Anglo-Swedish company as one of the world’s fastest growing major pharma groups.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Jason Neely)
