Aslan reports gastric, biliary tract cancer data for varlitinib

Aslan Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (TPEx:6497; NASDAQ:ASLN) said Jan. 14 that its pan-HER inhibitor varlitinib missed the primary endpoint of a Phase II trial to treat gastric cancer.

The study evaluated varlitinib as a first-line therapy in patients with advanced or metastatic disease, co-expressing EGFR and HER2. On the primary endpoint, varlitinib plus mFOLFOX6 chemotherapy failed to significantly reduce tumor size after 12 weeks of treatment vs. mFOLFOX6 alone (22% vs. 12.5%). Aslan said that after reviewing 17 progression-free survival (PFS) events to date, a trend toward improvement in PFS favored the varlitinib group...