4 Key Takeaways From ASCO

The Annual Meeting for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is being held in Chicago. After three days of presentations, and an two days to go, analysts at Piper Jaffray shared some thoughts on the weekend's main highlights:

• 1) The appearance of more effective and tolerable I/O combos with Opdivo and Yervoy in two types of lung cancer.
• 2) The presentation of additional data for Eli Lilly and Co (NYSE: LLY)’s abemaciclib from MONARCH 1 in the CDK4/6 segment
• 3) The presentation of further data for Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE: BMY) and Roche's PD-1/PD-L1 across an extensive range of tumor-types.
• 4) “A short list of other promising clinical benefits seen across a variety of other modalities (i.e. not I/O or CDK4/6 inhibition) and tumor types.”

Piper Jaffray started by highlighting the importance of two data sets presented for the combination of Bristol-Myers’ Opvivo and Yervoy in differing types of lung cancer (see results for Checkmate-012 and Checkmate-032). In addition, attendees of the ASCO Meeting witnessed the presentation of some other PD-1/-L1 data of importance. Check out the results for Merck’s Keynote-021 (Keytruda+Pem-C in 1L mNSCLC), and Roche’s early data for Tecentriq+Abraxane in TNBC, cisplatin ineligible front line bladder cancer from IMvigor210 and Cotellic +Tecentriq in colorectal cancer.

On the other hand, Eli Lilly’s 12m MONARCH 1 data for abemaciclib “did show a modestly improved ORR vs. 8m data (19.7% vs.17.4%),” Piper said. However, “the study still missed its superiority test vs. historic controls of excluding an ORR ≤15% on the lower bound of its 95% confidence interval which certainly adds risk to its approvability in this highly relapsed setting, though we recognize that accelerated approval can be based on advantages over existing therapies other than efficacy (e.g. toxicity, durability of response, etc.),” the analysts added.