AZ suffers second major drug setback

Published: 21-Aug-2002


A strong performance by AstraZeneca for the first half of the current financial year, which saw sales rise 10% to US$8.803bn (€8.943bn) from $8.09bn (€8.22bn) and operating profits up to $2.361bn (€2.398bn), has been overshadowed by a setback for its novel lung cancer drug Iressa. Although final data from the Phase III trials has not yet been released, it has emerged that the use of Iressa in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy is ineffective. It failed to make any significant improvement in survival rates among 1,000 newly diagnosed sufferers of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who also started chemotherapy.

AZ's ceo, Tom McKillop, said the drug has proved highly effective as a treatment on its own in trials involving 17,000 people, and this evidence, will form the basis of its application for approval in the US and Europe. AZ had been banking on Iressa as a blockbuster, with sales of more than $1bn (€1bn) a year.

This is the second setback for AZ in as many weeks. Safety concerns have led the US FDA to call for additional human trials on Crestor, its cholesterol-lowering drug, delaying the product's launch by a year.

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