RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:AstraZeneca's ADC disappoints - on severe adverse events March 06, 2024 - The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said Tuesday that it will not recommend the use of AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s antibody-drug conjugate Enhertu (fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki) to treat patients with HER2-low breast cancer.
https://www.biospace.com/article/uk-s-nice-rejects-astrazeneca-daiichi-sankyo-s-enhertu-for-nhs-use/
ADCs have their drawbacks — for example, cancer tumors can develop resistance to them over time. And not all newer ADCs in development are successful: Last month, Sanofi scrapped its only experimental ADC after it fell short in a late-stage trial in lung cancer patients.
Companies from Japan and China have emerged as effective ADC developers that are rapidly “innovating tweaks” to the drugs and bringing ADCs to the market that could be better than older versions of the drugs.
U.S. and U.K.-based companies are inking deals with those international drugmakers, such as two licensing agreements GSK signed late last year with Chinese-based Hansoh Pharma for ADCs targeting several types of cancer.
One of the major reasons is that the complexity of ADC technology has become a motivation for companies to invest in and develop the drugs. ADCs complexity could reduce the chances that other companies will create biosimilars, allowing drugmakers to keep ADC prices high for longer periods of time. And this then opens the door for ONCY which can be combined with ADCs and other relevant I/O agents.