AstraZeneca shares drop on lung cancer trial update

(Sharecast News) - The share price of AstraZeneca took a big hit on Tuesday after investors reacted to disappointing news from the company's latest lung cancer trials. According to a company presentation at the IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer in San Diego, overall survival rates "did not reach statistical significance" in the TROPION-Lung01 trial, which evaluated AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo's datopotamab deruxtecan versus chemotherapy.

Datopotamab deruxtecan (otherwise known as Dato-DXd) was being evaluated against docetaxel, the current standard of care chemotherapy, in adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with at least one prior line of therapy.

Nevertheless, detailed results from the phase III trial still showed a "clinically meaningful trend toward improving overall survival" with Dato-DXd compared to docetaxel, AstraZeneca said.

"Together with the data we have presented for the potential TROP2-QCS biomarker and from NeoCOAST-2 in early-stage disease, these results underscore our confidence in the important role datopotamab deruxtecan can play across segments and settings of non-small cell lung cancer," said Susan Galbraith, executive vice president of Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca.

The stock was down 4.2% at 12,182p by 1149 BST, having fallen as much as 5.6% earlier on.