Trillium Therapeutics Inc (TRIL)

[NY1972]

NYTimes opinion article

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/cancer-drug-ads-vs-cancer-drug-reality.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=1

"......A few weeks ago, though, I saw a television commercial that dealt that process a setback. It was a 90-second ad for Opdivo that began with soaring music and shots of older people in warm sunlight, gazing upward at a building on which the words “A chance to live longer” were superimposed. The voice-over said, “Opdivo significantly increased the chance of living longer versus chemotherapy.” The wording may be a little clumsy, but the velvet-voiced narrator made his point, bolstered by actors portraying lung cancer patients playing with babies and watching Little League games.

It would be incredibly uplifting if it weren’t so utterly misleading and exploitive. To date, only about one in five patients with Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer has seen any measurable response to Opdivo; and, in those patients who do respond, the median increase in life expectancy is only about three months compared with standard chemotherapy.

The overall five-year survival rate for people with Stage 4 lung cancer is between 1 and 5 percent. Instead of a “chance of living longer,” a more truthful narrator would have said, “Opdivo provides an outside chance for people with advanced lung cancer to live just a few months longer.”

Last Friday, Bristol-Myers Squibb announced that Opdivo didn’t pass its most crucial test to date: During a clinical trial, the drug failed to slow the progress of advanced lung cancer (compared with chemotherapy) when used as the front-line drug. Opdivo is still approved to treat lung cancer after a patient has gone through chemotherapy — but, dashing huge expectations and the highest of hopes, the drug didn’t work as a first treatment for patients.

Immunotherapy is an exciting development with the potential to significantly extend the lives of thousands, perhaps millions, of patients. But right now, the hype far exceeds the reality. The drugs are expensive and their efficacy, as shown by the Opdivo trial, is far from guaranteed.