Bayer AG (BAYN) said its cancer medicine regorafenib improved survival for people with advanced colon cancer by 29 percent, fleshing out details of a trial halted last year in order to give all the participants the new drug.
People who took regorafenib lived a median 6.4 months, compared with 5 months for patients who got a placebo alongside the best possible treatments for pain and other symptoms, but no drug to attack the cancer, the Leverkusen, Germany-based said in a study to be presented on Jan. 21 at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Bayer said it plans to submit regorafenib for approval in metastatic colorectal cancer in 2012. The product has the potential to generate more than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in annual sales if it’s approved in several different types of cancer, the German drugs and chemicals maker said last month.
“It will be very likely that they’ll grant approval because there’s nothing else like it,” said Axel Grothey, a professor of oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Each of the patients in the trial had already tried standard treatments without success, Grothey said.
Bayer agreed last year to pay U.S. biotechnology company Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ONXX) a 20 percent royalty for the use of regorafenib in oncology.
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