Replies to post #135251 on Biotech Values

[turtlepower]

I believe these results are from the dose escalation trials that ARRY was conducting in 2010 when they signed the agreenment with NVS.

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00959127

[mcbio]

Thanks for posting. The overall response rate is fairly low (7%), but it's promising to see a CR with single-agent MEK162. It's in the same ballpark as the response rate seen with AZD6244 (12%).

Yeah I agree. It's a low response rate but that one CR I would think should carry a lot of weight. We obviously need to know how durable the CR is and it's presumably too soon to know how durable that type of response will be in biliary tract cancer patients. Note too that the two responses were in a specific subset of patients (wild-type extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma).

It is somewhat lower than the response rate demonstrated with gemcitabine + cisplatin (26%) in a phase III trial. It would be interesting to see combination trials with MEK162 conducted in biliary tract cancers, but it probably isn't a priority.

Did gemcitabine + cisplatin actually have CRs in this type of patient population? Agreed that combo trials could be interesting down the road.

Do you know why this particular trial was funded by Array and not by Novartis?

As turtle noted, I think ARRY had already got the ball rolling on this trial prior to the deal with NVS.