Biotech Values

[dewophile]

RCC

"Nexavar had a ~2% RR in RCC but doubled PFS compared to placebo"

the flip side is sutent, which seems to have much better RRs but still has only modest efficacy - and in fact a fairly similar disease control rate (RR + SD). In the end sutent may very well end up having better efficacy than nexavar, but if it does it doesn't seem like it will be by that much.
clearly RR is difficult to interpret and may not be all that clinically meaningful in RCC. Perhaps disease control rate is the better early metric of efficacy. for nexavar it was 79% (best response of SD or better). in the il-21 abstract for the 23 patients in whom IRR were available it was 21/23 (91%). another metric available now is % patients with any tumor shrinkage. for nexavar alone it was 74% (obviously most of these did not meet criteria for PR). this was not disclosed in the ZGEN ASCO abstract, but interim data can be gleaned from the waterfall diagram presented at EORTC on the first 17 evaluable patients. it was 15/17 (88%)
hopefully these trends will translate to better PFS. we'll know end of the month..