BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product Development

No Regrets for Antisoma

Antisoma, Novartis carefully developed ASA404 for lung cancer, but still failed

April 5, 2010 7:00 AM UTC

The vagaries of drug development are such that even carefully thought out clinical programs can fail. Thus Antisoma plc says it has no regrets about the way it and partner Novartis AG have run development for ASA404, which failed last week in a Phase III trial in non-small cell lung cancer.

The partners halted the international Phase III ATTRACT-1 trial in 1,200 previously untreated NSCLC patients after an interim analysis showed there was "little or no prospect" that ASA404 plus carboplatin and Taxol paclitaxel would meet the primary endpoint of significantly improving overall survival (OS) vs. placebo plus chemotherapy...