Shares in Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) shot up 1.8% today on positive late-stage trial results for its ovarian cancer treatment drug zejula, while AstraZeneca (AZN) slumped 1.8% to £72.45 despite releasing positive data for its own cancer drugs lynparza and avastin.
The Glaxo Phase-three study called PRIMA was presented at a symposium for Medical Oncology and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The PRIMA study showed that zejula reduced the risk of the disease progressing or the patient dying by 38% compared with those taking a placebo.
The study enrolled patients that were part of a previously under-represented group that had a high risk of disease progression.
Glaxo's chief scientific officer Dr. Hal Barron said ‘Ovarian cancer is the eighth most commonly occurring cancer in women worldwide and women with this devastating disease have a five-year survival rate of less than 50%. We believe these data have the potential to fundamentally change how women with ovarian cancer are treated.’
The company intends to share the results with the relevant health authorities and expects to file an application for zejula's approval before the end of the year.
According to forecasts compiled by the company, annual sales of zejula could reach $1bn by 2023.
AstraZeneca’s study was presented at the same symposium and showed that its ovarian drug lynparza reduced the risk of disease progression by 41% in combination with avastin.
In addition, the length of time that the average patient lived with the disease without it getting worse improved to 22.1 months versus 16.6 months for those patients receiving only avastin.
According to forecasts compiled by Astra, annual sales of lynparza could reach $2.9bn by 2024.
Although it is hard to compare trial results, especially when one is a combined drug application (Astra) and one is a single drug (Glaxo), one advantage of zejula is that no diagnostic testing is required before the drug can be prescribed.
According to analysts at Shore Capital, ‘diagnostic testing can be a hurdle in routine clinical practice and hence even though we believe the efficacy with avastin justifies its use in HRD- patients, some physicians may prefer a simpler approach of using zejula without the need for diagnostic testing.’
Another factor which may explain the diverging share prices today is that shares in Astra are up 21% over the last six months while shares in Glaxo are only up 8%.
READ MORE ABOUT GLAXO AND ASTRA HERE
