March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc. said the cancer drug Sutent failed to halt the progression of advanced breast tumors in two studies, and the company stopped a trial of an experimental medicine to treat lung malignancy.
Sutent used as an initial treatment in combination with chemotherapy didn’t show a “statistically significant” improvement in slowing the growth of advanced breast cancer compared with chemotherapy alone, New York-based Pfizer said in a statement today. A second study found that Sutent used with a different chemotherapy drug didn’t slow the spread of breast cancer in previously treated patients when compared with chemotherapy alone, the company said.
Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, is focusing on cancer treatments as one of six therapeutic areas as it seeks to replace some of the $12 billion in annual revenue it will begin losing in 2011 when its cholesterol drug Lipitor faces generic competition. Sutent in January 2006 became the first treatment simultaneously approved for two cancers: gastrointestinal stromal tumors, or GIST, and renal cell carcinoma. The drug, also being tested for lung and liver cancer, generated sales of $964 million in 2009.
“While we are disappointed in the results, these trials have helped us define the limits and opportunities for the compound and better understand the complex biology of the disease,” said Mace Rothenberg, a senior vice president in Pfizer’s oncology business unit.
Blood Supply
Sutent is part of group of cancer drugs known as targeted therapies that stop cancer cells from dividing and chokes off a tumor’s blood supply.
Pfizer also stopped a trial of figitumumab in combination with another medicine for advanced lung cancer patients who already had been treated with other therapies, the company said today in a statement.
In December, Pfizer ended a trial of figitumumab as an initial therapy for patients with lung cancer after an independent safety committee determined the treatment was unlikely to improve patients’ survival. The decision announced today to stop the study of the drug as a second or third-line treatment in lung cancer patients also followed a recommendation from a safety committee that the therapy was unlikely to improve survival, Pfizer said.
Lung Cancer Deaths
The study was evaluating figitumumab for treatment of non- adenocarcinoma non-small cell lung cancer. About 219,500 new cases of lung cancer were reported in the U.S. in 2009 and an estimated 159,390 patients died of the disease, according the National Cancer Institute. Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common kind of lung malignancy, the institute said.
Pfizer said it will continue to study figitumumab as a treatment for prostate, breast and lung cancers, and for Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone tumor.
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among U.S. women, after lung cancer, killing an estimated 40,170 women in 2009, according to the cancer institute.
Pfizer shares fell 2 cents to $17.27 at 6:29 p.m. in extended trading after increasing 14 cents, or less than 1 percent, to $17.29 at the close of regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Olmos in San Francisco at dolmos@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 11, 2010 19:07 EST
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