BMY respond on Q about MRK anti-CTLA4 Abs (MK-1308) presented at ESMO:
<Alex, thank you for comment, your question, on CTLA-4. So let me just say a couple of things. I'm not going to comment directly on Merck's drug, I think it's probably better for them to do that. What I will tell you is a couple things about CTLA-4. I think CTLA-4 is a very important target. It's been something that we've been extremely proud of at Bristol-Myers Squibb in terms of how we have pursued this target. Let's just think about what we've learned about CTLA-4. We have shown, as Chris just told you, we've shown that we are able to improve outcomes dramatically in renal and in melanoma and we've made major improvements in the outcome of taking care of patients in those settings.The durability of response that we see with Opdivo and Yervoy together is something that, again, we're very proud of and I think it's made a big difference for patients, and not only in renal cell and melanoma, but if you look at MSI colon cancer, if you look at bladder cancer, if you look at small-cell lung cancer, if you look at non-small-cell lung cancer, those are all areas where we have shown evidence that CTLA-4 plus Opdivo can make a difference. I think those are all very important to keep in mind.
I think also something that Chris said that I think is extremely important to emphasize is when you look at patient-reported outcomes, and we've looked at patient-reported outcomes in our non-small-cell studies, we find that the patient-reported outcomes for patients treated with a combination of Opdivo-Yervoy can be superior to those for patients treated with a chemotherapy backbone. So I think that CTLA-4 remains a very important target.
We also think that when you give CTLA-4 in the doses that we're giving it in renal cell and non-small-cell it is very well-tolerated. In addition, we're continuing to develop new ways of targeting CTLA-4. For example, we have a CTLA-4 Probody that we're developing with CytomX. This is an agent which we think will preferentially get into tumors and will be able to possibly modulate some of the peripheral immune-related events and accentuate some of the anti-tumor events. We also have a (18:10) formulation of CTLA-4. Both of these drugs are in Phase I. Both of these drugs we expect to have some readouts in 2019. So CTLA-4 is a very important target for Bristol-Myers Squibb and one we look forward to presenting additional data for in the next coming year.> |
