AstraZeneca Plunges After Setback in Crucial Lung-Cancer Drug Trial
- Drug combination fails to meet key target in Mystic study
- Trial to continue testing for improving life expectancy
An AstraZeneca logo sits on a sign outside AstraZeneca Plc's offices in Cambridge.
Photographer: Jason Alden/BloombergAstraZeneca Plc plunged by a record after suffering a setback to its next-generation cancer medicine, hurting Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot’s ambition to join the league of the world’s five largest drugmakers.
A combination of two immuno-therapies -- part of a new class of drugs that activate the body’s defense system to attack tumors -- failed to do better than chemotherapy in checking the growth of lung tumors in some patients in the study dubbed Mystic, the U.K. drugmaker said in a statement on Thursday. The drugs were poised to generate more than $7 billion in sales by 2022, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg, and would have made the Imfinzi treatment into Astra’s best-selling medicine.