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CHICAGO—Novartis’ breast cancer drug Kisqali so far hasn’t lived up to expectations, and the drugmaker’s hoping some strong new data in metastatic patients will help. Can the numbers actually boost the drug’s sales? Depends on how doctors decide to use them.
Novartis unveiled the results Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, showing that among patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, adding Kisqali to fulvestrant kept the disease at bay for nearly eight months longer than fulvestrant alone.
That’s “among the biggest improvements since the induction of hormonal therapy some 45 years ago,” study investigator Dennis Slamon, M.D., Ph.D., said.
The results covered women who hadn’t been treated before and those whose disease had progressed after one line of treatment.