Chinese biotech CStone on course to launch lung cancer drug after successful clinical trial
- Hong Kong-listed CStone Pharmaceuticals’ Sugemalimab treatment could become the first drug of its kind in China to be to approved for non-small cell lung cancer
- The market for the category of drug being developed by CStone is estimated at 40 billion yuan a year currently and is expected to touch 80 billion yuan in 10 years’ time
Competition in the fast-growing but increasingly crowded cancer immunotherapy market is heating up, with Shanghai-based CStone Pharmaceuticals aiming to seek approval by the year-end to market its drug for lung cancer – China's top oncology category.
The company said that its Sugemalimab treatment was largely effective in the phase three clinical trial and could become the first drug of its kind in China to be to approved for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study involving 480 stage-four lung cancer patients, showed it was able to reduce the risk of disease progression or death by half, compared to those receiving standard therapies.
“It also has the potential to become the world’s first PD-L1 combined with chemotherapy to be approved simultaneously for treating both squamous and non-squamous NSCLC,” Frank Jiang Ningjun, chairman of the Hong Kong-listed firm, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Squamous tumours, typically found in one of the bronchi, accounts for 30 per cent of all lung cancer cases. NSCLC is the dominant form of lung cancer in China.
PD-1 is a protein on the surface of immune cells called T cells. PD-L1 is a protein on some cancer cells. When PD-1 binds to PD-L1, it signals T cells to leave the cancer cells alone, allowing them to avoid being attacked.
Antibodies that target either PD-1 or PD-L1 can block this binding and boost the body’s immune response against cancer cells. They typically can work on multiple types of cancers.