Array Jumps as Colon Cancer Combo Helps Patients Live Longer

(Bloomberg) -- Shares of Array BioPharma Inc. climbed as much as 17%, the most since February, after results in colon cancer suggest the drug-maker may have the first chemotherapy-free regimen targeting a genetic mutation for patients with advanced disease.

Array’s triple combination therapy from helped colon cancer patients live longer in an interim analysis of more than 600 patients whose BRAF-mutant colon cancer had returned showed those getting Braftovi, Mektovi and Eli Lilly & Co’s Erbitux together survived for 9.0 months while those getting just Erbitux with chemotherapy lived for 5.4 months. Patients getting Braftovi and Erbitux lived 8.4 months.

In an analysis of the first 331 patients in the trial, tumors shrank for 26% of patients getting the triplet and for 20% getting the doublet while only 1.9% of patients getting chemo and Erbitux responded. Response rates were higher -- 34% -- in patients getting all three drugs who had previously been treated with only one therapy.

Shares reversed from an 8.2% drop in pre-market. For the survival results, the magnitude of benefit was “a bit disappointing”, while response rates trailed expectations in the 30% range, Stifel analyst Stephen Willey wrote in a note to clients.

Willey recommended buying Array stock on any weakness on the “unfair expectations” derived from mid-stage results in a limited number of patients. Analysts with Goldman warned in April that shares already reflected optimism about Array’s combination as a first-line therapy in colon cancer. So far this year the stock had climbed 47% before today.

Investors should expect response rates to come down after early results showed rates in the 40% range in a much smaller number of patients, Goldman cautioned.

With the triple combo already in testing as a first line of treatment, Array hopes to quickly provide justification for its earlier use in patients, Ron Squarer, Array’s chief executive, said in a phone call before the results were made public. “Future analyses may improve the ability of the study to show a benefit,” he said.

Investors must have taken note as shares turned around.

Array plans to submit the study results to regulatory agencies in the latter half of the year. The triple therapy has the Food and Drug Administration’s breakthrough therapy designation in BRAF-mutant colon cancer, where patients have a poor prognosis.

Braftovi and Mektovi, which have FDA approval for use in BRAF-mutated melanoma, cost around $11,000 a month each. Squarer expects to present more complete results at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in July.

--With assistance from Michelle Fay Cortez.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cristin Flanagan in New York at cflanagan1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Steven Fromm

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