Innovent Bio Touts Gastric Cancer Drug Success in Late-Stage Study

Innovent Biologics said its investigational gastric cancer drug sintilimab plus chemotherapy delivered promising results in a phase 3 trial as a first-line treatment.

In an interim analysis from the Chinese trial, sintilimab when combined with oxaliplatin- and capecitabine-based chemotherapy significantly improved survival vs. chemotherapy alone for patients with unresectable, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, the company said.

The combination treatment “significantly prolonged overall survival in the first-line treatment of advanced gastric cancer,” said the trial’s principal investigator Jianming Xu.

Sintimilab has previously been approved in China for treating relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin’s lymphoma, nonsquamous and squamous nonsmall-cell lung cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma.