BioCentury
ARTICLE | Clinical News

Agenus shifts focus to cervical cancer from first-line NSCLC

May 18, 2018 8:07 PM UTC

Agenus Inc. (NASDAQ:AGEN) said in its 1Q18 earnings report that it shifted its developmental strategy to first seek approval of its checkpoint inhibitors as a second-line treatment for cervical cancer instead of as a first-line treatment for non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).

The company cited "increasingly crowded lung cancer opportunities" and recent data from Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) of Keytruda pembrolizumab in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for NSCLC. This month, Merck said Keytruda plus chemotherapy met the secondary endpoint of improving overall response rate (ORR) vs chemotherapy alone in the Phase III KEYNOTE-407 trial as first-line treatment of metastatic squamous NSCLC (see BioCentury, May 4 & May 18)...